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Any Duesenberg would be sure to draw attention, but this car featured in “Jay Leno’s Garage” always stands out from the crowd.
This four-door was built as a show car for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, where it became known in its time as the Duesenberg “Twenty Grand” due to its outrageous $20,000 price tag. Leno notes in the video that the average American car cost less than $1,000 at the time, and the average home was less than $2,000.
The one-off Twenty Grand wasn’t the most expensive Duesenberg ever built—a 1934 Duesenberg Walker Coupe cost $25,000 when new—but it was too expensive to attract first-time buyers. Duesenberg repainted it black and brought it back to Chicago in 1934, where it was eventually sold to a wealthy buyer. It is now part of the Nethercutt California Collection, where it is displayed alongside other classic cars from renowned automakers such as Bugatti and Hispano-Suiza.
Like the other Duesenbergs, the Twenty Grand is powered by a straight-8 engine based on the Indianapolis 500 race engine. The car’s engine has a displacement of 421 cubic inches and has a supercharger that produces 320 hp. Like car prices, those were staggering figures in the 1930s.
The race engine and the performance it delivered made the Duesenbergs considered a driver’s car for its time, but these cars were also designed to be chauffeured. Its unique carriage-built body includes partitions and a full set of gauges for rear seat passengers so they can monitor what the driver is doing. This gives new meaning to the term “back seat driver”.
The car was restored in 1979 and has been shown frequently since then, although due to its value it has not been driven much anymore. That means the driving portion of the video is limited to a bit of zooming around the airport apron, but it’s rare to see this quirky Duesenberg move at all.
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