| Re: Duesenberg?
There is a driver sitting at the wheel: You have to look at the proportions. The Stephens was a very moderate sized car in the same price range as Hudson and Studebaker, but very noticeably smaller. The engine was around 3 1/2 litres (without bothering to calculate exactly by the bore/stroke). The engine of this one would have to be at least twice that. Stephens was quite a nice-looking car, which sold quite well to farmers. The agent in Victoria sold farm equipment from the Moline Plow company in the Wimmera wheat belt; and so they decided to import and sell these cars that they made also. In 1964 I spent much of a day looking for one in a certain district; but could not find a trace of it.
If you read Hugo Pfau's book "The Custom Body Era", You can understand that some expensive cars with custom bodies may be impossible to identify as we try to do, because a few clients wanted their car to have a very different appearance than the chassis maker provided. LeBaron would even have a special high quality radiator of different style made. In which case the badge could also be different, or absent.
Several of the very first Duesenberg passenger cars had a radiator without the moulding, which had some similarity to this one. But as Grandpa Allen says, they had four whell hydraulic brakes from the beginning and ther is very little resemblance in this one. And the scale/proportions are quite different. I do have enough to restore 1922 and 1923 A model Duesenbergs, the earlier being from the first 6 months of production. I know them reasonably well. Ivan Saxton | 
June 30th, 2009
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