The Most Expensive Duesenberg Ever Made - Jay Leno's Garage

this is what you call road hugging weight but it accelerates nicely it pulls i mean the car is six thousand it's three tons welcome coburn enthusiasts another episode of jay leno's garage the car we're featuring today 1934 duesenberg walker coupe this is the aerodynamic coupe the only aerodynamic dusenberg ever developed uh this was built especially for lilly pharmaceutical i'm sure you've heard of them out of indianapolis just a huge company and the 30s they were well probably still are one of the biggest and wealthiest companies in the world their two brothers eli lilly ii and josiah lilly josiah lilly was the brother the younger brother of eli and he was the president of lilly pharmaceutical and he was the car enthusiast he's very conservative very private guy but he liked his cars he wanted duesenberg which was literally just down the street from them in indianapolis to design a car especially for him so he walked down there and he met with i think harold ames the president of duesenberg and told him what he wanted and of course being literally pharmaceutical money was no object making this the most expensive duesenberg ever produced this was five thousand dollars more than the legendary 20 grand duesenberg which showed up at the world's fair okay let's see what we have here what he wanted was an aerodynamic coupe he wanted a car that was efficient and sleek and modern and every sort of interpretation of that word he'd want something that looked old-fashioned and i think a guy named phil durham if i'm not correct was the head of design at duesenberg and he had a new designer named jay herbert newport who designed this car uh this new part had worked on what was called the baby duesenberg which later became the cord 810 now this car was built before that went into production but he had some similar ideas but the 810 chord although it looks sleek and kind of sinister it was not aerodynamic this car was truly aerodynamic for example now you see these headlights here i know these look like implants on a bad stripper but these are here for a specific reason as opposed if they were in the fender they would not be as aerodynamic see it's right in the center line of the fender the wind comes in breaks here and goes out this way that was more aerodynamic than having you know a crank where the you know the headlight came out in a bucket or something of that nature uh notice that what they call the biplane bumpers that looks like two wings of an aircraft well that's what they're supposed to look like what they do is that cuts the wind much more efficiently the big flat bumper this grill here which was i think probably the single most expensive automotive part you could come up with back in the day this grill was twelve hundred dollars now a house was twelve hundred dollars in in the early thirties the v windshield you know the way it's slanted back it's very aerodynamic very aircraft looking and the interior is really aircraft looking but we'll get to that in a in a second um you've got these sort of pontoon fenders i got to tell you how i came to get this car that's another fascinating story well i guess i'm getting off the track here uh let me go back to lily what happened to lily was uh lily got this car and being a conservative guy and a very private guy it was just too big and too flamboyant remember this is the middle of the depression and people threw rocks at cars like this back in the day because you see this thing i mean this looks like it was just meant to run over poor people that was the idea behind you looked like a landlord coming to collect the rent pulling up in this thing plus josiah lilly did not drive i don't think he well he drove but he never drove this car he always had a chauffeur and since it's a two-seater car it's somewhat cramped it looked rather odd to see two guys driving along with a chauffeur sitting right next to as opposed to sitting in the back anyway he felt the car was too hot a little too big too unwieldy he only kept it for a year and the interesting thing was when this car came out in 1934 he he met with ames i think in may looked at the plans for the aerodynamic coupe and in august it was ready to be mounted on the chassis the chassis for this car weighs 4 400 pounds and with the body on it it makes this thing well over three tons i i mean it's but you know the aerodynamics really work it's 70 miles an hour this is turning less rpm than the other duesenbergs and it does cut the wind and you can actually have a conversation it's pretty quiet in this car because the wind literally cuts through it and goes over it anyway jose lily had the car just about a year he traded in it and then oh it went to new york and then it was bought by a woman named rita demay something like that she was the mistress of one of those tammany hall politicians a guy named boss oh sounds like boss hog boss haig something like anyway they had one of these relationships that was sort of ooh hush-hush you know that kind of thing so the car was never really seen in public she kept it she was canadian and she would drive this from new york to canada to visit her family she took this thing to europe with her but it was never really photographed or seen much okay then a guy named otto steuerst s-t-o-y-e he owned a gas station long island by this time the car was starting to get a little worn he bought this thing and believe it or not he used it as a tow truck it had a hook in the back and he would drag cars off the highway with it and was left outside and the fenders rotted and the top this is a leather top by the way this is leather every time it rains you just go back to the dealership and they put a new top on well how cost efficient is that but that's what you're dealing with here these were these were rich people back in the day anyway this thing sat in the back of otto's gas station for 10 years maybe 15 years just rotting away and the guy i got it from morton french bought it in 1963 for 400 now french was a very wealthy guy who owned a patent on a number of plastics and but he was shall we say thrifty and he didn't put a lot of time or effort and they had a buddy of his a gentleman named guthrie did a lot of work on the car but it was not done the way we think of doing work on a classic today you know he put white leather in it a few other things anyway my friend randy emma who was the duesenberg expert he had uh never seen this car but he'd always heard about it because don't forget nobody saw it back in the day once it got delivered to lily it just went into their mansion their compound and was never really seen and then it got bought by the the mistress of that guy and then it went to canada so nobody really knew this car and every time randy was in new york and wanted to see this uh martin francine wasn't interested in showing it to him then finally guthrie was working like called randy about some parts or some information invited randy to come see it and randy realized oh my god this thing is really kind of cool looking when you see period photos of it and there aren't many it just looks big and ugly but in person it's actually quite sleek and kind of sinister and really fascinating looking so he told me about it i said well i got to buy this guy so i call up mor morton then he he was one of these harassable guys well into his 80s uh i i must have talked to him every week for a year so finally he was he wanted half a million dollars for it it was just a complete wreck but it's the only one so i said okay so i bought it for half a million dollars okay i go they give him the check he goes no i don't want to check no i'm not paying capital gains capital gains is 28 i'm not paying that i'm not paying the government's money the government's not getting my money black guys just hold on to it just hold on to it well what about that just take the car just don't pay me i don't i don't wanna i'm not paying capital gains okay so i get the car back here and now pebble beach is about 11 months away to do this car unless he randy did a herculean task restoring this car uh went to randy's shop they made new fenders did everything the the engine from years of towing cars off there was completely worn out just beaten and thrashed this thing was every single part needed to be fixed or replaced okay well randy did all that meanwhile you know you writing checks to get this thing done i still don't own it okay pebble beach is coming up i figure well i've owned the car god about eight nine months now let me call morton again martin i wanna get no i'm not paying capital gains i'm not gonna pay that guy the government's not getting my all right fine fine so i figure well let me let me talk to his wife you know so a couple weeks i call the wife and go hi listen you know i've got half a million dollars a year money i'd like to give it to you and i hear martin goes that leno tell him not get the capital gain all right fine he doesn't want to take the money because he doesn't want to pay capital gains it makes no sense to me okay and then the car gets finished the car's done i put another half a million bucks into it it's now in at pebble beach okay we got second place uh because the car wasn't quite finished it literally ran for the first time that morning at pebble beach randy was so hectic he did a beautiful job we won most elegant car we got a bunch of other it was really funny it was great it was great so now i i've got the car but i still don't own it you know and morton is like 88 years old at this point so i'm thinking what am i going to do okay so i just sit on it for a couple weeks and i pick up the payment say clinton to lower capital gains from 28 to 20 percent okay i'll say so i said when did that happen oh what happened yesterday so i called martin i go martin he goes i said did you check the paper oh i kept looking yeah it's down to 20 percent he's right send me the check that's fine so i sent him the check and sadly two weeks later he had passed away but if that had happened like two weeks earlier i wouldn't have owned the car it would have been a nightmare but it worked out okay it's really an unusual car it's just interesting that there's no history on it because it's just been hidden all this time uh as you can see you've got these massive doors here that open so you can uh allow cool air in or hot air out there depending on what what you like these hubcaps are interesting these were like 14 pounds apiece so okay we had new ones made and one day i'm going down the five freeway i'm driving along going about 70. and one i hit a bump a hubcap flies off it hits the ground turns into a frisbee and because i step on the brake at that point i see it go in front of me goes like this it's literally frizz bringing through the air bang it hits the retaining wall goes or goes across luckily it didn't take anybody out so i go to the next exit i go around i pick it up and it was all dented and everything but luckily it didn't hit anybody if you saw the last duesenberg video we did i showed you how this wheel lock work when you tighten it it pulls this forward so it unlocks the wheel so you can get the wheel off but you can look at that video and see how that works what we did not discuss with these uh well these trim rings here the way these work is these hold the tire on you see there's a ridge on the inside that applies pressure against the uh against the wheel so when you fill a tire with air it pushes out and locks the tire in place now what happens with a lot of old cars and we've done it too you have something called hydrogen embrittlement is when you chrome steel unless you bake it immediately after it's chromed it'll become brittle and that's what happened here are two wheel rims off this car these were done before i got it they had been chromed by somebody else and what happened was you go down the road and boom literally the tire falls off what happened was this car as i said weigh six thousand pounds and at 70 miles an hour going around the corner i have no idea how much pressure is on that wheel lock but uh that rim lock but it's it's a lot as you can see it just it just breaks these just shatters them like nothing like glass but that's what's called hydrogen embrittlement when you get something chrome it doesn't happen with nickel only happens with chrome when you take steel and you chrome it you need to bake it immediately after you've chromed it or else it'll it'll begin to well get brittle it'll get brittle from the chroming process and we'll lose all its potential strength so that's what happened here luckily we didn't have an accident we didn't get killed but just something to be careful about come on let's go look at some other car all right let's open the hood let's see there's nothing there's nothing light on this car everything is heavy this hood is massive if anybody decides to make carbon fiber river bodies let me know let me show you what this engine looks like okay now as i've said in the past all duesenbergs were built in 1928. it just took 10 years to sell them because the depression hit and what they did back in the day was whatever year you bought the car that was the year it was titled so even though this engine was developed and built in 1929 it's considered 1934 and it had some upgraded features notice this is a downdraft carburetor most of them were updraft carburetors carburetion had gotten good enough to the point where they would seal and the gas wouldn't leak past the valves this also has an air cleaner which is not common has all the usual duesenberg features the computer here that controls the lights on the dashboard we discussed that in the previous video if you want to take a look i'm going to be redundant to people here you've got over here you've got your chassis lubricator every 80 miles it automatically lubricates the chassis just all kinds of cool stuff like that there's your your duesenberg dipstick there's no dipstick just a needle and when you want to drain the oil just flick that switch and all dumps out the bottom uh cast aluminum firewall just a beautiful beautiful piece of machinery it costs 420 cubic inches four valve per cylinder uh 265 horsepower which doesn't seem like much today but back in the day that was twice the power of any other car i think the chrysler straight eight had well i know the masada for 180 horsepower i think chrysler had 130 cadillac was 160 180 this was the most powerful engine you could buy and pretty much a torque monster and you needed every one of those 265 horses to move this car because it weighs three tons three-speed transmission actually once underway it drives pretty nicely it's pretty smooth but it is it is a big big car when i read that that woman who uh was going out with the tammany hall politician when she took this to europe i just can't imagine driving us through the cotswolds in england just really it's wider than the road just running over people hilarious but yeah there you go that's the engine let's close this up let me show you how hard it is to close this you need to sort of do this this is really heavy oh your door popped open there let's see and another annoying thing is the fact that all duesenbergs every lock on the duesenberg is a separate key let's see here we go is it locked we got it no i'm not locked in here yeah see i don't edit this to show you this is what you have to go through when you only when you watch other videos people oh things seem to happen magically you know cars always start first time but there you go and then it locks in i just leave the key in there in case of fire all right let's move now i've got you've got air vents here here and here to bring air into the cockpit because that was another problem josiah he had with the car it was too hot it was just so hot in this thing so he sent it back to the factory or to walker the company who built the body and they insulated it but not properly they just insulated the the rugs from the but what it did was it just kept the heat in and made it actually worse the doors on this thing are massive this is like a safe listen to this shot look at these hinges how they graduate here you have four massive hinges these look like something off a bank vault just amazingly huge you've got a courtesy light down here it's not on now because i the battery is switched off because it's parked here give me an idea how impractical this car is i've got to show you the trunk you need two people to put gas in this because again here's the aerodynamic features of this notice the tail lights are knife edge so the air goes under here and you have these biplane bumpers again so the air goes through here there's no exterior handle here because they didn't want anything to to break the wind so let me open this up and a different key for everything there we go as you see you can't even put anything in the trunk because of the tough spray spray tires there and you got your gas filler right here so you have to have one guy put a shoulder here like this you see if you're by yourself you kind of do it this way so you put your face on that then you stick the hose in there it's hilarious it makes no sense at all but that's pretty much what you had to do and then listen to this shot bam and these open up as well when you want to change your tire the fender skirts are keyed you see and they it lifts it into a socket that you lift that out and you can change the tire i mean the skirts really make it looks weird without the skirt oh here's something else cool i forgot about this your golf door for those of you that play golf but i hope this is the right key there we go and i keep tools and there's that duesenberg wrench i always talk about to get the wheel off okay here we are inside the car uh this is just a slipcover we did the upholstery in the original broadcloth like it had and in fact i made these covers out of the same material these are just slip covers but they fit so well and they're pinned in the back that i'd have to pull the whole seat apart to take them off but that shows you what the original interior looked like and besides with these uh coveralls on they might be greasy i don't want to get them all dirty so i'll give you some idea what that looks like that rear window cranks down oh here you go this kind of you got two glove compartments each with fire extinguishers in them and remember i told that story about having a fire extinguisher that was the same color as the car well here it is here yeah i did the same thing here and when i had a fire i couldn't find it but there it is there's another fire extinguisher i always carry those very aviation oriented in the in the interior of the car don't forget lindbergh had just a few years earlier flown the ocean and aviation was moving so quickly and advancing so quickly and uh everybody wanted to have an aviation style dashboard that's why you have a compass up here in the roof as you would have in an airplane of the period you've got an altimeter you've got the full complement of gauges you've got the ammeter speedometer a brake pedal uh pressure you've got four-wheel hydraulic brakes with a booster on this thing your speedometer oil pressure ammeter and of course your water temperature you have your four gauges here this is chassis lubrication let you know to check it just let you know when it's working a light comes on every 1400 miles to check the water in the battery another light comes on every 700 miles until you check the oil or to change the oil that's what they did you change your oil every 700 miles uh got your mirror here a little cigarette lighter very cool try and find one of those that's a rare piece uh and a dopey little ashtray up here like very cool he's flicking that uh these are kind of neat you've got these are plastic tinted so you look through them which is rather clever you got air vents down below you got exhaust cut out down there but as you can see it's still pretty cramped in here i've got the battery disconnect switch on so none of the interior lights are on but they obviously come on when you open the door you can get more air in here these cars were very hot in the winter it was fabulous in the summer it was uh not real good that's why uh lily got rid of his uh but we'll take it next door we'll put it up on the lift and we'll show you what this thing looks like so it looks like underneath okay we got up in our stella coney let's show you what it's like underneath here remember this is a 25 year old restoration but it still looks good still looks you know we clean under here all the time doesn't appear to be any leaks there's your battery box that's different from the standard duesenberg under there it's just a pain as you can see we like the optimal batteries because there's no gas they don't leak you don't get uh corrosive fluids going in everything there's the original muffler is still on it god bless them there's your torque tube okay there you go and of course massive crankcase 12 huge quarts of oil i guess huge quartz of oil sounds silly it's 12 quarts of oil uh and there's your drain plug like the other duesenberg you throw that switch that i mentioned under the dash under the excuse me on the block and all the oil just comes out of there and that holds you wouldn't think it would but it does you know it's almost better than the drain plug because you can't strip it okay there's your radiator behind the grill you see your hydraulic brakes and of course that massive 4400 pound chassis look at that beautiful uh crankcase there very nice there's your transmission there's your vacuum booster right there there's your better shot of your battery right there a little six volt look how big the battery tray is that shows you how big the original battery was god this thing is heavy you hear it creaking going up on the lift here honestly look at these frame rails they're just massively strong there's your energy ratio we put what 355s in this i think so it cruises nicely on the freeway it's 70 or 80 miles an hour there's your shocks up there electric fuel pump normally these had a fuel pump submerged in the tank but those are a little dangerous don't do them anymore and across your pipes and that's pretty much it let's uh let's take this thing for a ride and see how those aerodynamics work you know it goes pretty good it's got quite a bit of pickup i couldn't imagine driving this in 1934 i guess it would be like a bugatti veyron at the time but you do feel like you're in a little ford tri motor you know one of those planes with the split windshield you got the compass up here and it's a lot of fun to drive you know that was the great thing about duesenbergs they're really drivers cars you know the one i've got the the baron the uh the blue one we did a couple of months ago i guess it is now that's the lowest mileage one i've ever seen with only 46 000 miles uh these people just drove these things there was a book a guy named elbert i think his name was called america's mightiest motor car the duesenberg and it was written i think in 1951 so uh all the people that bought the duesenbergs in the 20s late 20s and 30s were still alive to talk to him about what the experience is like it's a great read if you ever see it around anywhere you get a copy it's fun people talk about passing people 100 miles an hour like one day i was on the 210 freeway here and it was late at night and i was in one of the duesenbergs and i could see up up ahead faintly out a single little taillight as i get closer i realize it's a model a so i pulled up behind the guy and i'm beating the horn he's kind of getting annoyed i pulled by and go past him and he had a big smile on his face you know i mean it's probably the first time a duesenberg has passed a model a in a long time you know packards pierce arrows they were all quiet cars this thing had that throaty rumble but it accelerates nicely it pulls i mean this car is six thousand it's three tons whenever i drive one of these home i always take the extra long way you know go out that way take one freeway cut over to another freeway because they're just so nice to drive i mean for as heavy as it is clutch action steering action very nice i mean if you're obviously a dead stop it's a little laborious to turn but i mean look at this i'm you know i'm not showing a lot of strength here i'm just gently turning the wheel and very nice i just don't want to put two tires that are too heavy or too big on it i love second gear second gear is good for about 90 miles an hour in fact with these 355s i think second gear is good for about 113 according to the ball you know there's nothing like a straight a i mean v8s are good i like v8s but the straight aid i don't know just everything's going in the same direction there haven't been that many owners in this car only four really you had uh of course josiah lilly you had uh the girlfriend of the uh tammany hall boss he had auto the gas station and morton french that was it you know they always say oh you should buy the best example of a car you can find but there's only one example you got to buy that one god this thing was worn out blown out when i got it as i said had been used as a tow truck and all the fenders bashed in the leather roof peeled off interior all chewed up so it was nice to put it back to its original glory this is what you call road hugging weight it really is the most inefficient use of space i've ever seen the trunk is enormous but the spare tire is on that slider bar that takes up the whole truck there's only barely room for two people in this thing i can't imagine having a chauffeur sitting right next to you it seemed real goofy you know it's funny josiah lilly knew exactly what he wanted he wanted an aerodynamic car and that's what he got he got a real aerodynamic car but at the time when it was finished it was so flamboyant and as i said he was so conservative it was it was still pretty much in the depths of the depression the drive around indianapolis something like this where people are selling apples for a penny oh my god you know as i said before when they when the factory produced a one-off like this the first thing they do they would take it to dealerships and put it on display on auto shows but nobody ever saw this this was built pretty much in in secret and i think lily picked it up september 25th 1934 and the car was never seen again at least publicly anywhere i mean there was no reaction to the car nobody knew anything about it you know the aerodynamics really do work you know other duesenbergs you feel that massive front end pushing its way through this is like it's like a blade of a knife it just cuts through you can't even put your elbow out the window because it's too high and these suicide doors you don't make the mistake of accidentally opening that door oh my god you'd never be able to hold it if it's open and we're doing 55 60 and i'm barely 2 200 rpm something like that the red line in this thing is about 4 000 yeah 4500 you can go maybe which is unbelievable big lump of cast iron like that eight pistons 420 cubic inches moving up and down i love finding a fast two-lane highway for these this is where this thing really feels like it's illegal because obviously there was no super highway is when it was built so to go 60 or 70 on a two-lane road back in the day only the rum runners are doing that this is the coziest car on the windows i love taking out when it's freezing you know nice crisp winter day get the engine heat coming through you know it's starting to be uh rush hour here in los angeles getting near four o'clock four thirty all the crazies come out people rushing to get home so i'll probably uh drive a little more and then take it back in anyway i hope you enjoyed this uh little trip in the duesenberg you've never seen one they're just fascinating cars and i wish more owners would get out and use them and drive them so the parts would be made available you know the bentley drivers club is the best all the bentley owners drive they go a lot of dudes remember guys just park them or put them in a museum and that's not where they belong they belong on the open road so if you see me out driving this thing just say hello see you guys later thanks a lot bye-bye uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 383,303

Rating: 4.9694638 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Duesenberg, Duesy, American cars, classic cars, straight eight, car nerd, Randy Ema, Eli Lilly, pre-war, Walker body, old cars, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, CNBC Prime, Jay Leno Cars, Race Cars, Restored Cars, jay leno garage tour, 1934 Duesenberg Walker Coupe, duesenberg Walker Coupe, duesenberg jay leno, jay leno cnbc, jay leno cars

Id: 0L24MNoKq54

Length: 32min 6sec (1926 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020