In what is to be our last full week in Tucson for a while, I started the week by taking some video of the Rincon West Garden Railroad. Buddy Mike and his friend Shawn let me mount a phone on their train cars, and try some fun stuff. So here’s 5 minutes or so of fun train things:
The last car for this Tucson Auto Museum series is this gorgeous 1929 Duesenberg. Honestly, I thought I’d already written about this car, but since I can’t find the piece I’ll put it in here.
I’ve always said Duesenberg is my favorite of favorites. So amazingly over the top for its time.
E.L. Cord was a very successful business man, who owned both the Auburn car company and made cars under his own name; Cords. (See this about the most famous Cord.) The Duesenberg brothers, Fred and August, had been involved in designing and racing cars since the early 1900’s. As so often happens, the brothers were better at racing and designing than running a business, and that’s where Cord came in. Duesenberg had entered receivership in 1924, and Cord bought it in 1926. He told the brothers he wanted them to design and build the best car in the world, with no respect for the price. By 1929 they had done it – the Model J. Like most fine cars of the time, it was sold as a chassis only. Well, chassis, radiator, dashboard, steering gear, etc… You then had a coachwork shop build the body to your desired specifications. The finished cars would end up costing from $14,000 to $20,000. This was when the average American household income was about $4,000!
Pretty much all of the Model J Duesenberg chassis were made in 1929. It took a while to sell them, and if they were sold and bodied in, say, 1931, they were licensed as a 1931 model.
Duesenbergs were amazingly fast, able to do well over 100mph when a Ford struggled to get to 40. The 1920 Duesenberg Model A boasted 88 horsepower, the largest commercially available at that time. Now the Model J, at the end of the same decade, sported 265 horsepower! It was incredibly advanced for the time. And so elegant! Jay Leno said of the extremely sharp hood ornament “It looks like it could spear any pedestrian with the audacity to step in your way!”
The early Volkswagen bugs (think 1940’s) had little arms behind the windshield that would swing out with a light, signaling a turn. Maybe they got the idea from this Duesenberg, which has a little gadget on the edge of the windshield for just that purpose. I refrained from pulling it out for the picture, but here it is:
The dashboard is interesting too… There are rotary dials for both speed and RPM.
Since anti-lock brakes wouldn’t be invented for half a century, they had a brake adjustment knob with settings for Dry, Rain, Snow and Ice. Really just a proportioning valve, but pretty cool.
Notice the altimeter on the right. In an age when airplanes were new and exciting, the altimeter was a fun thing to include.
When they heard I was leaving for the rest of the season, they decided to auction all the cars and close the place down… Ha! Not at all… but some cars leave sometimes, and others then have room to move in.
Here is a short video of moving day… sped up 3 to 5 times actual speed. The loading took about 3 hours, with all the paperwork and moving VERY slowly to protect these very valuable cars!
Here’s yours truly with Wayne (Owner of these awesome cars and museum) and John, fellow volunteer.
Next week we fly over the date line, and arrive… in the Future! That’s why this blog showed up on Thursday, when I posted it on Friday! Come back next week and see what the future looks like from down under!
I wonder what my father’s cherished 1959 sky blue Chevy Impala would be worth today. We kids had to endure sitting on the original plastic seat coverings – in our cut-off jeans or bathing suits – until the plastic started to dry up and crack. He did all the upkeep and work on its engine himself. When he sold it about 50 years later, he got about 10 times what he paid for it new.
That Düsenberg is a work of art!