Packard at the Peak: Ask the Man Who Owns One

James Ward Packard, founder of the Packard Motor Company, apparently disliked being trapped in long decision-making sessions so much that he famously said, "Let's do something, even if it's wrong."  His engineers must not have listened to him, because from the beginning in 1899 until the last real Packards rolled off the line in 1956, the company's products held a reputation for careful if conservative engineering and for bank-vault levels of solidity, so much that the company picked "Ask the man who owns one" as their slogan. 

There was style, too.  Packards were expensive from the beginning, and during the heyday of custom coachwork, from the 1920s through the Great Depression, the cars were bodied by some of the best style houses, including Le Baron, Dietrich, Rollston, Brunn and Darrin. After World War II, a handful of Packard one-offs appeared with Italian bodies by Vignale, Motto* and Ghia.  

Packard had produced its first V12 engine, the Twin Six, in 1916, perhaps in response to Cadillac's V8.  It went out of production after 1923, but in 1932 Packard topped its line of inline 8s with a brand new V12 of 445 cubic inches.  They had enlarged it from a smaller V12 intended for an abandoned front-drive car project.  For the 1934 model year Le Baron designed and built perhaps the most sought-after Packards on the short-wheelbase (well, 135") 1106 chassis. Four boat-tailed Runabout Speedsters shared brakes and chassis frame with the senior Eights, but featured the Twelve as power.  In a way, they were factory hot rods...

The Speedsters, and the Aerodynamic Coupes* built in similar numbers by Packard to a Le Baron design, were considered by Packard fanciers to be the most classic designs produced by the firm. The Twelves fit into the fierce competition for the shrinking market for luxury cars, and competed with Cadillac and Marmon V16s as well as V12s from Lincoln, Auburn and Franklin. 

In addition to the Speedsters and Coupes, Le Baron built a few Dual Cowl Sport Phaetons on the Model 1108 chassis, with a wheelbase a foot longer than the Speedsters. If anything, these Phaetons were even more spectacular than the Speedsters and Coupes.  The price was $7,100, about three thousand dollars more than the "standard" Twelve sedans.  It was the kind of money that would have bought a very comfortable house during those Depression years...

This Dietrich body on the massive 147-inch wheelbase Packard Twelve Model 1006 from 1933 was called a Stationary Coupe. The "stationary" part of the name distinguishes it from the coupe roadster, which had a top which could be lowered.  Despite its huge size, the car offered tight seating for only 4. 1933 was the second year for Packard's new V12, and the worst year of the Great Depression, which limited that year's sales to 520.  Packard had originally named their new V12 the Twin Six, to link it to their earlier V12 from 1916-23. Dietrich made numerous bodies for Packard, but the Stationary Coupe was one of the special designs made in small numbers. 

By 1935 Packard's design staff under Ed McCauley had rounded the body forms and adapted the fenders to smaller diameter wheels.  Alex de Sakhnoffsky consulted on the designs for the new bodies, which featured fenders enclosing the front of the wheels, streamlined headlight nacelles, and front opening doors.  Dietrich, in its last year as a coach builder, and Le Baron, produced all the bodies for the big Packard Twelves.  In 1935 when this maroon Victoria was built, Packard had introduced the 120, an entry in the medium-priced field populated by Buicks, and with the 120 came independent front suspension.  But this Model 1207 Convertible Victoria on a 132 inch wheel base held onto a beam axle behind the proud radiator fronting the 473 cubic inch V12.  Hydraulic brakes were featured, however, with a vacuum assist...

A year later, Packard released the Model 1407 Opera Coupe in the senior Twelve series. The bodywork shown below shows off a similar conservative approach to the Convertible Victoria above. The upright lines of the windshield and flanks yield only reluctantly to curved window openings...

Hermann Graber* of Switzerland took a more modern approach with the 1938 Model 1601 shown below.  The eight cylinder, two-door cabriolet features teardrop fenders and more rake to the windshield, which is framed by narrower A-pillars and follows the line of the cowl....

The tapered rear fenders and deck share similar form with a Duesenberg Graber built in the previous year, though the subtle dorsal fin on the deck lid echoes some contemporary designs by French coach builders like Sauotchik and Figoni.  This car was the only Packard Graber bodied in this style.

Four door convertibles were still a part of the automotive scene in 1938, but the phaeton, with its skimpier top and side curtains, was beginning to fade.  If you could afford a Packard Twelve Phaeton like the one below, bodied by Derham, you could also afford a weathertight sedan for the cold seasons...

...or something like this 1938 Brunn-bodied Touring Cabriolet, one of two Packard Twelves built in this style, this one for J. Seeburg of the famous jukebox company, seen below standing with his new purchase.  Note the twin, tinted skylights above the windshield, called "Neutralites" by Brunn. They also built at least one Lincoln K* Series Touring Cabriolet with this feature.

The section of the roof over the doors and windshield remained stationary, while the rear section of the roof forward of the trunk could be lowered. In Europe this style was called a landaulet...

The interior featured the usual Packard attention to detail, and was trimmed with broadcloth seats and generous amounts of chrome, Bakelite and polished wood. Though the Great Depression had taken its toll on fabricators of custom bodywork, and Dietrich, a Packard favorite, had closed by 1936, coach builders like Brunn, Darrin and Le Baron continued to offer bespoke bodywork for Packards.

One of the last examples of those special bodies was this 1941 Super 8 One Eighty Sport Sedan, one of no more than 100 designed and built by Le Baron.  By the 1940 model year the Twelve had been discontinued, and the Super 8 One Eighty was Packard's prestige line. The Sport Sedan may have been Packard's belated answer to the Bill Mitchell-designed Cadillac Sixty Special which had appeared in 1938, and was in its last year when this Packard appeared. The cars shared horsepower (150 hp for the Caddy V8, 160 for the Packard inline 8) and the same 127 inch wheelbase (the Caddy shrank by an inch in 1941), but the Packard was a more expensive proposition because of its bodywork.

1941 was a pivotal year for Packard.  It was the last year of the traditional styling with separate front and rear fenders, except for convertibles, and the senior Packards with custom bodywork.  It was also the first year for the new Darrin-styled Clipper sedan, introduced in April of that year, with front fenders that flowed into the doors, and full-width bodywork without running boards.  1941 was also the last full year of production before war stopped civilian car production.  The Darrin style spread from sedans to coupes in the 1942 line, and over thirty thousand Packards were built before production stopped in February of that year.  The Darrin style, as well as the postwar Packards, will be examined in our next installment.

*Footnote:  The Motto-bodied Packard racer for the  Carrera Panamericana is pictured in our post entitled "Unsung Genius: Rocco Motto, the Closer" from 3-25-18. The Le Baron-styled Model 1106 Sport Coupe Packard built for the 1933 Century of Progress exhibition is shown in our post entitled "Vanished Roadside Attraction: Chicago's Century of Progress, 1933", posted on 5-31-20.  Other designs from Hermann Graber on Alvis, Duesenberg and Talbot-Lago chassis are shown and discussed in "Forgotten Classic: The Graber Alvis", posted on 1-22-16.  And Lincoln's Model K, a competitor to the Packard Twelve, is profiled in "Forgotten Classic: Lincoln Model K, Not Your Average K-Car" from 11-9-17.  Photos include a Brunn Touring Cabriolet from the year before our Packard example.

Photo Credits:
2nd & 4th (Le Baron Speedsters), 12th (Derham phaeton):  George Havelka
5th (Le Baron Phaeton):  tumblr.com
6th (Le Baron Phaeton):  Cincinnati Concours d'Elegance
9th: (Opera Coupe):  Bonham Auctions
10th (Graber Packard): i.wheelsage.org
11th (Graber Packard): Wiley on flickr.com
13th thru 15th, 17th & bottom:  Mecum Auctions
All other photos:  the author

Dream Car Idea Gets a Retrial: Tucker 48 and Tucker Turbo V8

As 1944 dawned, the Allied powers were secretly reconnoitering the Normandy coast and preparing the most massive amphibious invasion ever mounted. The Axis, retreating in Russia and then Ukraine, kept its grip on Eastern Europe, where the curtain had yet to be raised upon unimagined inhumanities. Battles blazed across Italy and on Pacific islands, and on the high seas. Most Americans didn't know it yet, but the Machine Age was about to give way to the Jet Age, and in stunningly quick order, to the Atomic Age.  In the American Midwest, Preston Tucker was thinking about an automobile.

The sometime car salesman, regional sales manager (Pierce-Arrow) and machine shop owner from Ypsilanti, Michagan, had worked with the famed engineer Harry Miller on a series of Ford V8-powered Indianapolis racers from 1935 to 1939.  In summer 1944, Tucker hired George Lawson to come up with styling for a postwar production car.  Tucker's outline of features for the chassis included a rear-mounted water-cooled flat six, automatic transmission, disc brakes, centrally-mounted steering with all controls close to the wheel, a padded dash, and seat belts.  He also wanted front fenders and headlights that turned with the wheels, and a central headlight as well.  Lawson came up with numerous sketches that were used after the war in promoting the car to investors, but left at the end of 1946. Tucker then hired Alex Tremulis, who had worked for Auburn Cord Duesenberg before the war, to style a more practical sedan while a team of engineers worked on the chassis design.

Connections are sometimes drawn between Tucker's enterprise and the 21st century Tesla launch spearheaded by Elon Musk.  Both Tucker and Musk shared a talent for promotion, but diverge in their interest in, and mastery of, technical details, as well as in management of risk in financing their enterprises.  Tucker financed his purchase of a giant ex-Ford plant in Chicago by selling dealership franchises while engineers tried to come up with a functional prototype. Precious time was wasted on a giant 589 cubic inch engine with hydraulically-actuated valves and no camshaft.  This engine was abandoned when it failed to perform, and Tucker bought Air Cooled Motors, maker of the Franklin O-335 helicopter engine, which his team then converted to water cooling, requiring more expensive redesign and tooling. This decision may have been prompted by noise control concerns; however it should be noted that a successful air-cooled V8 powered luxury sedan had been produced by Tatra* in Czechoslovakia in 1934, and its cars had resumed production after the war. Plans for an automatic transmission were put on hold while the pre-selector 4-speed (3 + overdrive) transmission from the prewar front-drive Cord 810 was adapted for production. The resourceful and cash-strapped Tucker engineering crew reconditioned some used Cord gearboxes for use in nearly two dozen pre-production cars, then worked on an improved version of this unit.

The rendering of the styling scheme by Alex Tremulis shown above pretty accurately predicts the shape and details of the production car, except for the painted lower bumper and grilles at front, and the conventional door hinges at rear which appeared on the "Tin Goose" prototype. The production car shown below went with fully chromed bumpers, which added unnecessarily to the visual heft of the front end, and with suicide rear doors, which saved money on tooling, as a single, symmetrical C-pillar served for both sides. Along the way from visionary's dream to production car, the Tucker 48 lost its central steering, disc brakes, and fuel injection, but retained a safety glass windshield and padded dash, a steering box located behind the axle for safety, and an engine mounted on a subframe which could be easily removed for service. Doors extended into the roof for easy entry and exit.  And the car featured a central headlight that followed the steered wheels at angles over 10 degrees to illuminate corners.

Carburetors replaced fuel injection on the reconfigured Franklin flat six, but the engine still made 166 horsepower and 372 lb.-ft. of torque.  Zero to 60 mph. came up in 10 seconds, and top speed was 120 mph.  So the Tucker was about as fast as the pioneering Jaguar XK-120, a car that would appear across the Atlantic in the fall of 1948, but would only carry 2 passengers.  In order to get enough engines produced for his car project after purchasing Air-Cooled Motors, Tucker abandoned numerous military contracts. One wonders about how the car project might have evolved if Tucker had kept those military contracts to keep cash flowing in, and instead of redesigning the engine, used it in a high performance car more like the XK-120, a car which soon found an avid market in the America. In France during this period, race driver J. P. Wimille* had developed a mid-engined, 3-seater GT car, also with central steering, but gave up his idea of building his own advanced V6 engine by adopting readily available Citroen fours and French Ford V8s.  Tucker could have saved time as well as production cost by giving up his dream of a new engine, and concentrating on the physics and dynamics of chassis design with a smaller, lighter car, as Wimille had...

Tucker's dream car was derailed by accusations of stock manipulation and a trial after charges were brought by the SEC, possibly with the connivance of a Senator with connections to Detroit's Big Three. Tucker was acquitted of all charges, but the trial effectively ended any hope of getting his Model 48 into real production. Only 51 examples of Tucker's dream car (including the prototype "Tin Goose") ever left his Chicago factory.  Just under 4 dozen survivors are confirmed today by the Tucker Automobile Club. The Tucker story, however, of a visionary optimist taking on the politically-connected moguls of Detroit, has had staying power.  Four decades after the Tucker saga unfolded on the front pages of the newspapers (television was still in its infancy), Francis Ford Coppola released "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" which was generally well-received by critics but, like its namesake automobile, failed to recoup its production costs. If nothing else, it heightened collector interest in the surviving Model 48s, two of which were owned by the director.  Another two Tucker 48s were owned by producer George Lucas; he finally sold one in 2005 for nearly $400,000. More recently, restored Tucker 48s have been auctioned for over $2 million. As sometimes happens when supply is in two digits but value ascends to seven digits, collectors began commissioning replicas. Some of these were for collectors disappointed in their search for originals, and others were projects conceived using the Tucker's distinctive shape as a takeoff point for something substantially new.  One of the latter is the car built by master hot rod artisan Rob Ida in New Jersey...

His team was able to create CAD drawings from measurements of a surviving Tucker 48, and to fabricate a steel floor pan, bumpers and trim pieces as well as steel-framed door openings, and to form other body components of carbon fiber.  On the interior, they echoed the original early postwar materials, including bakelite.

A twin-turbocharged 4-cam Cadillac Northstar V8 with 4-speed automatic transmission is mounted transversely in front of the rear axle, offering around 380 more horses than the original flat six, and more user-friendly weight distribution.  Ida Concepts moved the engine and suspension from the front of a mid-Nineties front-drive Cadillac Seville, and  modified the engine's internals as well as the suspension to cope with the increased power.  Finally, a Tucker 48 received the degree of careful study the original engine choice, and chassis dynamics, had lacked...

This might be the view you'd get of the twin-turbocharged, mid-engined Tucker replica as it passes you, especially if you're sitting in one of the anonymous, ubiquitous SUVs that have taken over our highways. The Tucker saga is a reminder that the history of the American automobile is full of stories that might have ended differently, if only someone had taken a different turn at some decisive fork in the road...

*Footnote:  Tatra automobiles are pictured in "Cars & Ethics: A Word or Two on VW" , in these post archives for 11-27-15, and in "Roadside Attraction: Rolling Sculpture at North Carolina Museum of Art", from 12-31-16.  The futuristic prototypes built by J.P. Wimille are depicted in "Three for the Road: Jean Pierre Wimille Forecast a GP Car for Everyman", posted 7-9-16.

Photo Credits:
Top (brochure rendering):  George Lawson for Tucker Corporation, on wikimedia
Color rendering: Tucker Corporation, on flickr.com

Monochrome rendering: Alex Tremulis for Tucker Corporation 
All photographs:  the author

Forgotten Classic: Chevy's Corvette SS Ran Before the Ban

If you haven't encountered the car below, your first impression is possibly that it's a customized Corvette from, say, 1957.  But it's really the first purpose-built road racer from General Motors, and the first Corvette to have a metal body*...magnesium, in this case.  And it exists because, for a brief moment in GM's push to sell more Corvettes, engineer Zora Arkus-Duntov convinced management that a serious effort needed to be made to confront the Ferraris, Maseratis and Jaguars cleaning up on the road racing courses of the Sports Car Club of America. In 1956, to attract management's interest, he had taken two mostly stock Corvettes and one modified car to Daytona Speed Week. John Fitch and Betty Skelton had taken 1st and 2nd places in the production sports car category, and Duntov himself had won the division for modified sports cars. This convinced GM brass to green-light the program that resulted in the blue car shown below, XP-64, the Corvette Super Sport. Body design was assigned to Clare MacKichan. Chassis design was another matter...

GM bought a Jaguar D-Type for evaluation, and GM Styling's first approach to coming up with a winner on a tight schedule involved substituting a Chevy V8 for the twin-cam Jaguar six, moving the steering to the left side, and covering the whole thing with, well, GM Styling. At least this approach would've given them the best brakes in racing at that moment. But the Corvette engineering team, led by Duntov, decided that the cut-and-paste approach was unlikely to work. So GM also bought a Mercedes 300SL, and Duntov's team spent a good while studying that car's tubular chassis.  In fairly short order they had a design for a road racer with a lightweight tubular chassis, powered by a 283 with Rochester fuel injection. The test mule, first of two cars built, was bodied in fiberglass.  It's shown below with Duntov at the wheel...

The engine in the final version of the Super Sport featured aluminum heads and made 310 hp from 283 cubic inches.  Suspension was by coil springs all around, with trailing arms locating a De Dion unit at the rear. Brakes were adapted from Chrysler units with twin leading shoes, and outfitted with finned aluminum covers over iron backing plates. Why Duntov's engineers, having originally been instructed to crib a whole Jaguar chassis, had contented themselves with drums instead of discs, is a mystery...

The magnesium-bodied* racer also differed from the fiberglass mule in adopting clamshell-type access in front for the engine and also for the De Dion rear end with its quick-change differential. The D-Type Jag GM had bought featured similar engine access, and the Lotus Elevens entered at Sebring would have the same access front and rear.  John Fitch, seen here with Zora Arkus-Duntov, would share driving duties at Sebring in 1957 with Lancia master Piero Taruffi.  The finished car shows off Halibrand alloy knock-off wheels. The whole package weighed a tidy 1,850 pounds.

The magnesium-bodied car wound up wearing the regulation chest-high plexiglass windshield in its one and only race outing, at the 1957 Sebring 12 Hours, where Duntov's team brought the fiberglass-bodied test mule as well.  Both cars were fast in practice, and when Duntov allowed Maserati pilots Sterling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio a few courtesy laps in his new car, Fangio broke the lap record on his second time around.  He then won the race in the 450S he shared with Jean Behra.  Moss and Harry Schell were 2nd in another Maserati, a 300S. The Corvette SS was just shy of two dozen laps when rear suspension woes ended the race for Fitch and Taruffi. This wasn't such a bad start for a brand-new road racer, but GM brass would shortly decide to honor the Automobile Manufacturers Association ban on corporate support of racing, and the Corvette Super Sport program was shelved.  The goofy plexiglass roof punctured by the Flash Gordon headrest visible below highlights the conflict between Duntov's engineers and Harley Earl's stylists, and makes one wonder whether GM wasn't more interested in having a zoomy Motorama exhibit than a successful road racer anyway.  Ironically, in the very next year Lance Reventlow would figure out how to make a wildly successful road racer with his Chevy-powered Scarabs*, and would depend almost exclusively on LA hot rod culture, as well as on engineers and metal shapers catering to the growing SCCA scene, with no obvious participation from General Motors.

Half a dozen years later, Zora Arkus-Duntov would build a few copies of another lightweight racer, the Corvette Grand Sport, and GM brass would get nervous and cancel the whole business, only to wind up clandestinely supporting Jim Hall's Chaparral team not too much later, in what turned out to be a turbulent decade inside and outside the auto industry.  But both these tales of corporate intrigue will need to be saved for another day...

*Footnote:  Lance Reventlow's adventures with the Scarab are reviewed in "Timing Is Everything: Reventlow Scarab Saga", in our archives for 6-2-17. For a look at other special Corvettes that happen to have metal bodies, visit our series of posts on Corvettes bodied in Italy by the likes of Pininfarina, Vignale and Scaglietti, starting with "The Italian Jobs: Corvettes in Italian Suits" (2-24-16), followed by "The Italian Jobs Part 2: The Kelly Corvette Was the First Postmodern Car" (2-27-16), "The Italian Jobs Part 3: Another Eurovision Corvette" (3-10-16), and "The Italian Jobs Part 4: Saved From the Crusher" (3-13-16).  

Photo Credits:
Top color photo:  George Havelka

All other photos:  General Motors

Auburn Speedsters: In the Shadow of Cord and Duesenberg

Salesman and ex-racer Errett Loban Cord took over the ailing Auburn Automobile Company it its namesake town in Indiana in 1924.  He soon hired Alan Leamy as chief stylist, and emphasizing styling and value for dollar (something WIlliam Lyons was soon to do in England with Jaguar) brought Auburn sales roaring back from a trickle.  In 1926 he formed a combine with the Duesenberg brothers, Fred and August, in the hope that the expensive, race-proven Duesenberg products would add an aura to the Auburn lineup.  In 1928, the year Auburn introduced Alan Leamy's boat-tailed Speedster design below, Duesenberg released its legendary Model J at the top of the line.

For awhile it seemed the new combine could do no wrong.  Sales boomed, and in 1929 Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg released the front-wheel drive Cord L-29.  The stock market crashed in late October of that year.  For awhile, A-C-D powered through the crisis on a mixture of slick style for the money (Auburn), a unique drive system (Cord) and impressive engineering at exclusive prices (Duesenberg).  By 1931 A-C-D was the 13th largest auto maker in America...

...but the party was soon over.  Cord's Auburn strategy had been to offer a lot of style and solid build quality for the money, but engines were fairly prosaic flathead inline sixes and eights, with rigid axles front and rear.  Auburn held onto mechanical brakes longer than wisdom dictated; Duesenberg had pioneered 4-wheel hydraulic brakes on their 1920 Model A.  So Auburn introduced a V12 in 1932; at $975 the Standard coupe was the lowest-priced V12 ever.  The boat-tailed Custom Twelve Speedster offered a dual-ratio Columbia rear axle to go with the 391 cubic inch engine built by Lycoming, a part of Cord's industrial empire.  At $1,275, the Speedster seems a spectacular bargain today, but 1933, the year the V12 Speedster was introduced, was the worst year of the Great Depression.  A total of 14 range-topping 12-165 Speedsters were produced, and under two thousand V12s in total. Production of the Twelve ended after 1934...

A-C-D was down but not yet out, and Cord moved designer Gordon Buehrig over to Auburn from Duesenberg, where he had designed many bodies for the Model J, as well as a front-wheel drive "baby Duesenberg" that would become the classic Cord 810 in 1936. The cost of the Cord front-drive V8 tooling meant the firm had little funding for a new Auburn tooling. So Buehrig grafted a cleverly restyled grille and fenders onto the Leamy-designed 1934 body shells, and Duesenberg engineers added 2 cylinders to the Lycoming flathead six for a 280 cubic inch inline eight, then supercharged it.  It made only 10 less horses than the V12, at 150. Hydraulic brakes were now standard on all Auburns, and the supercharged eights received an aluminum cylinder head as well as the dual-ratio rear axles, which effectively offered 6 speeds. The maroon car below is a phaeton; there were also 2-door convertibles, coupes and sedans, as well as a 6-cylinder version.  

                             

But the car that captured the imagination of car enthusiasts was Buehrig's design for the Supercharged Speedster.  Buehrig dressed up leftover boat-tail speedster body shells with pontoon fenders cut away in front to harmonize with the V-shaped grille and curving bumpers. Chromed exhaust pipes exit below big "Supercharged" insignia flanking the hood, and a Streamline Moderne flying lady hood ornament provides a finishing touch.

At the rear, contours of the boat tail and fenders are smoothed into a more streamlined form than on previous Speedsters. The dash with its twin chromed modules would find an echo in postwar sports cars; round instruments face the driver, while the passenger gets a clock. 

A plate attached to the dash certified the car had exceeded 100 mph before delivery, and was signed by A-C-D test driver and speed record holder Ab Jenkins, another sign of Cord's talent for showmanship.  It all came to a stop after 1936, the final year of Auburn production, while Cords and Duesenbergs continued through 1937.  Tooling costs for the new Cord 810 and 812, dwindling sales in a Depression economy, and the inefficiency of making 3 different makes of car with few shared parts, all contributed to the collapse.

Counting cars built in 1935 (the 851) and 1936 (the 852, identical save for the number on the grille), an estimated 500 of these final, supercharged straight-eight Auburn Speedsters were built. Except they weren't quite final...

Auburn enthusiast and car collector Glenn Pray bought the rights to the name and a trove of leftover parts in 1960, and in 1966 began building fiberglass-bodied Auburn Speedster replicas on Ford Galaxie chassis.  These also used Ford-sourced V8 engines, and Pray's Model 866 Speedsters got something the Auburn originals never had: independent front suspension.

138 of these Speedster replicas were built over a decade and a half, and got enough attention that several other firms got into the act, though their efforts lacked the authentic trim pieces of Pray's 866. With several firms cranking out replicas of Gordon Buehrig's original Speedster design from the Sixties well into the 21st century, one might well ask whether there can be more than a thousand left of Gordon Buehrig's 500 boat-tail Auburns...

*Footnote:  Other products of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg combine, as well as other Indiana car makers, are reviewed in "Looking Back: When Indy Was Indy", posted on Sept. 1, 2015.

Photo Credits:
Top & 2nd: wallpaperup.com

3rd & 4th:  Ruby Smith
5th:  classic.com
6th:  the author

7th thru 10th:  Mecum Auctions

11th & bottom:  Jason Potter

Digital prints edited by Veronika Sprinkel:  veronikasprinkel.com