The Duesenberg Brothers' Legacy: A Tour of a 1920s Luxury Car

As we sit inside this magnificent machine, it's hard to believe that this was once considered a "big box" car. The Duesenberg brothers, who won Indianapolis many times, were renowned racecar designers and engineers. When they built their luxury car, they incorporated plenty of racecar engineering and suspension, making it a formidable road presence. It's no wonder that chauffeurs had a blast blowing the doors off everything on the road back in the day.

Fast forward to today, and this 1920s Duesenberg is back in its grandeur. After being well-worn for 50 years of abuse, Randy has done an incredible job restoring it to its former glory. The project took over a year and a half to complete, but the end result is nothing short of stunning. As we take this big car out for a spin, I'm reminded of how much power lies beneath its imposing exterior. With plenty of torque at its disposal, this Duesenberg is ready to leave the competition in the dust.

The driving experience is not without its quirks, however. The chauffeur seat is designed for comfort, with plenty of legroom and a sliding glass partition that opens up for an unobstructed view of the road ahead. Inside, you'll find classic Duesenberg gauges, including the first car to feature hydraulic brakes – a precursor to modern anti-lock systems. Other features include an adjustable brake system, which allows drivers to fine-tune their braking experience based on road conditions.

As we cruise down the highway, I'm struck by how unique this car is compared to its contemporaries. The advanced design and engineering that went into building this machine are a testament to the Duesenberg brothers' innovative spirit. It's clear why this car has become so desirable among collectors today – it's not just about speed; it's about style, sophistication, and a connection to the past.

The interior is a beautiful example of 1920s luxury, with rich leather upholstery, polished wood trim, and classic lighting fixtures. The advanced features of the time are truly remarkable, from the adjustable gauges to the hand-operated brake lever. As we drive, I'm fascinated by how these early cars were designed for functionality – not just speed, but also comfort and practicality.

The Duesenberg brothers' legacy extends beyond their racing achievements and luxury car designs. They left behind a body of work that continues to inspire car enthusiasts today. As collectors, we can appreciate the artistry and craftsmanship that went into building these machines, as well as the engineering ingenuity that made them so formidable on the track.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this Duesenberg is its original chassis, which originally had a Willoughby big box sedan body attached to it. Over time, the owners decided to strip away the less desirable bodywork and return to the pure lines of the original design. Today, we get to enjoy not just one of these rare cars but also a glimpse into the design process behind them.

As I take in the grandeur of this 1920s Duesenberg, I'm reminded that even the most iconic cars from the past are more than just relics – they're testaments to human ingenuity and creativity. With Randy's expert hands having restored it to its former glory, we get to experience firsthand what made these cars so beloved in their time.

The true extent of this car's capabilities is only revealed as we take it for a spin on the open road. As I shift gears and accelerate, I'm struck by how smoothly it responds to my touch. The Duesenberg brothers' innovative design has left an indelible mark on automotive history – and it's clear why their cars continue to captivate car enthusiasts today.

With Randy at the helm, we get a glimpse into the world of these incredible machines. As the second owner of this particular Duesenberg, I'm humbled by its 80-year-old age and the privilege it is to have had such an incredible piece of history in my life. Whether you're a car enthusiast or just someone who appreciates a well-crafted machine, the Duesenberg brothers' legacy is sure to leave you in awe.

As we wrap up our tour of this magnificent machine, I'm left with a renewed appreciation for these bygone eras and the people who helped shape them. The Duesenberg's story is a testament to the power of innovation and design – and it's an honor to have shared this experience with you.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enfrom the episode of Jay Leno's Garage we're here in the Duesenberg section of the garage well I'm gonna look at today is the very last original owner unrestored Duesenberg it's been restored now this is a rather long arduous process this is a car that was locked away in a Manhattan parking garage in 1931 and really not much happened until we pulled it out in 2005 in fact it was a story about it in old cars weekly see it says Leno lands last original unrestored Duesenberg the sad thing is the car was pretty far gone we couldn't leave it original remember when we pulled that Model X to Zinberg out of the barn here in California number years ago right here take a look at that fortunately that one just needed some mechanical updating and it was okay this car was a little too far gone there was a bad leak in the garage and Manhattan and for 60 years or whatever 70 years water dripped on the rear fender and just ate it away and it just needed a lot of work when I got the car it had 7,000 miles registering on the odometer once we got into it we realized it was more like a hundred and seven thousand miles but it's a fascinating story it was owned by the Straus family it was parked in that garage in 1931 I don't know why maybe the depression maybe it seemed a little too fancy whatever it might have been but it stayed there all those years in the 50s it was taken out by the Sun up to a restoration shop to get it running again and then essentially put back in the garage so it kind of fell into disrepair tires were stored in the rear of it so the original interior got kind of ruined from just 50 years of tires being put back there she was a good old girl and I was able to acquire it and restore it back to it well I think better than new it was never a pretty car this is a woods bodied car now woods was famous coachbuilder they got famous because they built Lincoln's funeral carriage so that shows that kind of stuff they were into this is not by any means a pretty car or an attractive car this is a big town car meant to chauffeur wealthy people around New York City the rumor has it Herbert Hoover owned he was president was often a passenger in this car because the family obviously quite wealthy now we did not do the restoration of this one here at the shop Randi EEMA the Jews even Berg genius and historian who's done all the Duesenberg we don't touch the Disney works because Randy knows them inside and out and you know he knows how to save the original patina as much as possible we updated the car a little bit Randy chromed the windshield front it was a big ugly black car wasn't very attractive this opens up for the chauffeur for some reason I might they love having the chauffeur out in the elements well everybody else sat comfortably in the back we keep this closed because I think it helps the line of the car more looks like a big box with this open but you'll see all that here's some footage of Randy doing the restoration this car is the last original owner unrestored Duesenberg as you can see it's all there but everything has to be done every nut and bolt every washer every gasket everything's got to be polished the Duesenberg was transported from Jay's garage to Randy's shop here the journey began after a careful trip across town will actually take it down to every last nut bolt we won't undo the rivets but we will take every nut and bolt apart and those nuts and bolts received as much care as every other part on the Duesenberg in fact in a restoration like this the procedure is clear every piece is treated as though it's the most important aspect of the car soon they were freeing the gear from the body so they could get it stripped and ready for paint it took a lot of time now very slowly let's lower it down there were no big surprises when we disassembled the car we did take off about probably 35 40 pounds of grit grease and dirt for an Eastern car that was driven most likely on salty roads it's an amazing shape the the grease may have been enough early enough on that it really protected it has very little rust no damage to speak of it all when that task was out of the way the next major phase was all about sandblasting once completed the sandblasting eliminated the last surface remnants of the old car it erased the primer and paint of the previous decades leaving the original bare metal exposed from blasting to building a new wood top this car requires many skills these cars were built mostly from Ash and we use ash in the replacement pieces that go back in these automobiles we're going to paint it like the factory would do if they were going to assemble it at the factory but it wasn't done with lacquer you can't even by lack of paint anymore it's illegal in California this speech up is gonna sit for probably a couple of couple of weeks and then we'll color sanded back at Randy EEMA shop the mighty Duesenberg engine had to be rebuilt retuned and eventually reinstalled onto its fully restored chassis 420 cubic inch double overhead cam straight-8 four valves per cylinder it was run at Bonneville at 5,000 rpm with a supercharger that would develop 320 horsepower this particular model is 265 horsepower capable of 88 miles an hour and second gear when a 1929 Big Eight Chrysler would do 75 miles an hour flat out and the car will do more than go fast it'll look like a work of art thanks to many newly chrome parts and for those of you with sharp vision no your eyes aren't playing tricks those wrenches are lined with scratch preventing tape the car was available with dual tail lights but in its day to a requirements were only for one soon the project moved to the inside for upholstery design and fabrication here at Milton's they gave the Duesenberg a classic look throughout the interior of the car there's all fabrics and materials we can purchase and we can reupholster it to the exact design and criteria that goes in the original upholstery same with the leather seats it pretty easy to make asses haven't changed much in the last 70 years the atera was originally white we've updated the interior a little bit we've done it and what I call early bordello this is reminiscent what people would have done in the period women like this fancy brocade sort of work on the doors so we just sort of brought it back a little bit make it a little fancier than it was but make no mistake it was pretty upscale when it was new as you can see you sat back here it's a little warmer I think with this peach colored interior than it would have been originally you got a divider window there as well there's your cigarette lighter right there and your ashtrays here in little pockets jump seats right here come out as you see these jump seats come forward here like this and then they open up like that to take an extra passenger kind of interesting think of Herbert Hoover sat here and drove around I never understood why nobody want a window right here you want to look out you have to keep doing this but if you're a rich guy and you're sitting back here reading your Wall Street Journal whatever everything else is pretty much standard Duesenberg you know the big seven liter engine twin overhead cam four valves per cylinder very powerful and our Duesenberg to make good town cars because they were really powerful they were fast they could climb any hill these had pretty low gearing in them because they really weren't meant to be highway cars so we put 354 rear end in it so she'll go out and cruise nicely at 60 or 70 miles an hour but yeah we'll show you some more of the restoration then we'll take it for a ride well today's the day and the moment of truth it's what we've been working for for the last year so we'll see what Jay says you know the things we've changed you know it was missing totally missing all the running board rubber we had to make all right we made the wheel covers lights were damaged we did that one rear fender was rusted right through I remember that yeah put that off here yeah the trunk rack we had to make a new one because it had been hit several times before so many parts in the engine compartment her new gas tank covers new you know it's just amazing what all we had to do that was would gone totally rotted through in the top and in some of the sills of course we refinished all the wood right interior it was totally beyond use because of tire storage in it Randy and his team have fully restored the Duesenberg to all of its former glory this is why you always want to go to someone who's an expert in the field although we do a lot of our own restoration stuff here we do mostly in the mechanical work Randy this is like you know those guys when you get the Rembrandt painting of something it's all screwed up and the guy takes the little and cleans it make sure everything is perfect exactly as it should be well that's it Randy does with these cars he brings them back exactly as they should be and retains as much of the original as we can you know when we got the car and we looked at the speedometer it only showed 7,000 and when we tore the engine apart had been bored with new Pistons oh and and use quite a bit since that time plus the rear end was all new new parts in it with every place so we started looking we realized no this is not a low mileage car this time I let's go right right yeah it was it was pretty far gone I mean I think that's probably why it's sat in the garage all those years is it didn't run the amount of money to get it to run although not as much as it is now was still pretty astronomical true at any point in the day yeah Duesenberg Duesenberg who've never been cheap to fit you have your check your oil right there for the Duesenberg it's the dipstick moves back and forward that way so you see it's full when you want to drain the or I'll just flip that switch and the oil comes out of the bottom nowhere cleaner because there was much cleaner back in the 30s I guess explain this here this fuel pump well the car has three pumps right it has an electric pump back underneath and that establishes the pressure it Prime's the carburetor and maintains the pressure you have a mechanical pump in this housing which is a bellows not a diaphragm but a brass copper bellows it works that if it's sat your battery's dead the theory is you can hand pump it tonight and then crank started yeah that's a lot more man than I think I'm capable if you can crank stock this car well if you steel and I'm not gonna get in a fight with it this is the bellows control for the shutters that opens and closes the louvers in front at a hundred and forty degrees they start to open as you see these louvers are open now and as the car cools they will close and in the wintertime you could probably drive around all day and they would stay no it's just an external thermostat really I like any cars that were ahead of their time in their time and as I said before in an era when most cars could barely go a mile a minute and these went well look it's right there a hundred and thirty miles an hour I mean that would be equivalent today I think of a Ferrari or zr1 Corvette going 200 miles an hour you know the Duesenberg brothers were race car designers and engineers they won Indianapolis many times and so when they built their luxury car even though it was a luxury car there was still enough racecar engineering and race car suspension in there and I'm sure a lot of chauffeurs had a lot of fun blowing the doors off everything on the road back in the day when they had these things I am impressed with where it was to where it is now it was unfortunately a very ugly well worn abused 50 years of abuse automobile and it is now back to its grandeur I'm excited I'm glad to see it's back to him you know it's a little over a year and a half project and we're glad it's done is the big car being a Doozer burger cause it's got plenty of power but you never forget you'll call it a big box in back there not the most comfortable Duesenberg to drive because it's made for a chauffeur they never wanted a chauffeur to be too comfortable so my legs are a little all over the place but the windshield opens and this top goes back if you want to get the specifications on the Duesenberg motor watch some of the other videos we go into it a lot more depth since this is about the eighth Duesenberg we've done just fascinating that a car like this could last this long you know most stews and Berg's and most cars built with these Town Car bodies that we're not considered attractive is the wedding who had a Bentley or Duesenberg whatever people would take these chassis throw the body away and make LeMans replicas or make an open car or just change the body to something they liked a little bit better in fact that Duesenberg chassis I have in my garage this one here we did a road test on it that originally had a willoughby big box sedan body on it but somebody took it off because they didn't like it as Duesenbergs become rarer and rarer obviously over the years suddenly everybody wants these now and they're desirable again as you can see this is a big imposing automobile you don't want to try and parallel park this thing but hop in the back we'll give you a little chauffeur ride as you can see we've got the sliding glass partition open there's plenty of legroom in this thing you've got your standard Duesenberg gauges you've got your Duesenberg both across the first car to have hydraulic brakes on the first American car and you can adjust the brakes for dry rain snow or ice you turn this lever here and adjust how much fluid more or less is in the system so you can if you put it on ice where you can stomp on the brakes and they won't lock up pretty clever kind of a primitive anti-lock system this is your advance and on the ignition this is your hand throttle this is your head like jokes daughter temperature gauge altimeter oil clock brake pressure rather odd designs you almost have to look down to look at the clock because it's so far under the dash that's what custom bodybuilders did back in the day hand brake here a car but the true Duesenberg fashion it's got plenty of power especially once it's rolling and you see you got your interior lights look up and all this stuff we take for granted now I was considered like a little big deal back of the day got your interior lights you can read the newspaper in the evening on the way home from work while your chauffeur drive yeah these are just considered big old boxy cars back in the day trying to go with the equivalent would be maybe a big four-door Cadillac from the early 80s you wouldn't think that would be collectible now but in a few years somebody's gonna want one of those and that's the way these words everybody liked to Duesenberg motor because of the power but they didn't want to drag around to tons of bodywork so it's nice that this one was preserved Randy did a beautiful job on this car as he does with all Duesenbergs and Randy a cause a real historian he has all the original factory drawings so you can be sure that your car is restored accurately kind of funny thing I'm only the second owner of this car and the thing is what 80 years old pretty amazing anyway I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane it's fun to drive these unusual cars you know a lot of people don't say four-door cards or these kind of cards anymore so it's fun to kind of preserve a piece of history like this and it's fun being only that the second owner of a car that's my got 80 90 years old almost so once again thanks to Randy EEMA and we'll see you all next week you\n"