Any Duesenberg is bound to grab attention, but the cars featured in this episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” always stand out.
Built as a show car for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, this four-door car was known at the time as the “Twenty Grand” Duesenberg due to its then-staggering $20,000 price tag. In the video, Leno points out that the average price of a car in the U.S. was less than $1,000 at the time, and the average price of a house was less than $2,000.
The one-off Twenty Grand wasn’t the most expensive vehicle Duesenberg ever built—the 1934 Duesenberg Walker Coupe cost $25,000 new—but it was too expensive to woo buyers in the first place. In 1934, Duesenberg repainted it black and brought it back to Chicago, where it was eventually sold to a wealthy buyer. It’s now part of the Nethercutt Collection in California, on display alongside other classics from renowned automakers such as Bugatti and Hispano-Suiza.
Like other Duesenbergs, the Twenty Grand was powered by an inline-8 engine based on an Indianapolis 500 racing engine. The car’s engine displaces 421 cubic inches and is equipped with a supercharger to produce 320 horsepower. Like the price of a car, this was a staggering amount in the 1930s.
Racing engines and the performance they provided meant that Duesenbergs were considered a driver’s car in their day, but the car was also designed to be driven by a chauffeur. Its distinctive coach body includes a bulkhead and a full suite of gauges for rear-seat passengers so they can monitor the driver’s behaviour. It gave new meaning to the term “backseat driver.”
The car was restored in 1979 and has been seen frequently since then, although due to its value it is no longer driven very often. That means the driving portion of the video is limited to gliding around the airport tarmac, but it’s rare to see this unique Duesenberg in motion.