The Only American Car That Ever Beat Bugatti

On December 1st, 1928, a company that had never made a profit unveiled a car whose bare chassis cost seventeen Ford Model As. Two hundred and sixty-five horsepower, twin overhead camshafts, thirty-two valves, a speedometer reading to 150. Ten months later the stock market crashed. They built about 480 of them anyway, for Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, the Maharajah of Indore and a Harlem preacher, and in August 1937 they stopped. In 2018 one of those cars sold for $22 million. This is the story of Fred and Augie Duesenberg, two immigrant brothers from an Iowa farm: the 156 mph record on Daytona Beach with the car on fire, the 1921 French Grand Prix that Jimmy Murphy won bandaged from waist to shoulder while the crowd stayed silent, four Indianapolis 500 wins, the Model A that was the best car in America and could not be sold, the salesman E. L. Cord who bought them and ordered the best car in the world, the Model J and the men who owned it, Fred's death on a Pennsylvania mountain road in one of his own cars, the Mormon Meteor, the SEC, the $2 million sale that ended everything, and the last Duesenberg, delivered in 1940 to a German painter who had escaped the Gestapo. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:44 Two Brothers 3:49 The Beach 4:59 Le Mans 7:02 Indianapolis 8:50 The Model A 9:56 The Salesman 10:56 The Model J 13:37 Fred 14:36 The End 16:29 What It Was Worth #automotivehistory #classiccars #enginehistory #musclecarhistory #americancars #hotrodhistory