What was driven by Al Capone, actress Ginger Rogers, and kings, including Italy’s Victor Emmanuel III?
In answer, Duesenberg’s Model J was. It was a luxury car and status symbol in America and beyond, and of all the Model Js, Duesenberg’s designer Gordon M. Buehrig considered the rakish, 5-passenger Tourster his favorite.
With just eight original Toursters built by the Derham Body Company of Rosemont, Pennsylvania, a 1931 model, number J-423, has appeared at Sotheby’s and is to be offered at auction on Aug. 18. Matching the notoriety of this car, J-423 has its own urban legend tied to it—as it allegedly survived World War II after being hidden in a haystack.
A Duesenberg Model J Tourster Found In a Haystack
The story of how a Duesenberg Model J Tourster found its way under a haystack begins with the car’s original owner. Sotheby’s explains.A 1941 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer said that Mr. Hallahan “for years maintained a pretentious apartment in New York, and commuted between there and Europe with a $17,000 automobile among his baggage in countless escapades from Manhattan to California.”
With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Mr. Hallahan supposedly returned to the United States from one of his jaunts to Europe, leaving his Tourster behind. The Duesenberg survived the war apparently “thanks to an anonymous benefactor who buried it under a haystack,” according to Sotheby’s, where it remained until the war’s end.
After the war, the Tourster was rescued by an Italian military officer, a Brigadier General Niblo, according to notes provided by the auction house. The car then changed hands at least two more times before finding its way back to the United States where it remained for the past 55 years.
Two families have kept J-423 since 1968 when it was acquired by classic collector Anthony D. “Tony” Pascucci of Meridian, Connecticut, who saw it restored to its original glamour. He brought the car to the shop of Ted Billing, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who returned it to its original condition.
J-423’s outer panels were repainted a crisp, subtly metallic two-tone green, and the interior was redone in complimentary olive-brown leather. Meanwhile, neither body nor frame were separated and both remained in excellent condition. The original headlights, however, were missing and replaced with correct units from Mr. Pascucci’s vast stash of Model J spares.
Restoration of the car was completed in 1975, and the Tourster was finally moved to Mr. Pascucci’s heated garage. Ownership of the car was eventually transferred to Mr. Pascucci’s “Duesenberg-mad” son, Johnny, before being finally passed from Mr. Pascucci hands to its present owner, Terence E. Adderley, in 2013. It has been preserved in the Terence E. Adderley Collection since then.
Gordon Buehrig’s ‘Masterpiece’ Up For Grabs
Sotheby’s expects J-423 will fetch between $1,600,000 to $2,000,000 at auction. The auction house describes it as “in remarkably intact condition,” aside from the paint that shows its age “largely represented by cracks and minor chipping in a few locations” and light creasing in the interior.The genius of Mr. Buehrig’s design appears in subtle touches, as shown in the dashing-looking “rear windshield” between the back and front seats. Called a “dual cowl,” the feature in the Tourster’s design solved a problem common to other phaetons of the era: namely, the dual cowls were clumsy to operate. Mr. Buehrig’s solution was to allow it to slide up and down behind the front seat with the crank of a handle, keeping it out of the way of rear passengers.
The eight original Toursters were all built by the Derham Body Company of Rosemont, Pennsylvania. The present car is considered a Classic Car Club of America Full Classic.
“All eight Derham Toursters have fortuitously survived, but two are now permanent museum holdings and the others remain in long-term collections,” Sotheby’s stated. “Thus, this may be the only opportunity in the near future to acquire one of the all-time classic Duesenberg designs, a Gordon Buehrig masterpiece—and one that retains all of the original features and abundant charm of its creation. It is an outstanding Model J, deserving of being kept by its next caretaker for another half-century, more or less!”
