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1938 Cadillac V16 7P Touring Sedan BARN FIND *SOLD*


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*SOLD* Thank you!

I'm not prone to getting caught up in the hype around so-called barn finds, but I don't know what else to call this one. Out of circulation for more than 40 years, it has been in dry, protected storage all that time and as far as I can tell, the only piece missing is the horn button. Style number 38-9023, 7-passenger touring sedan, of which 65 were built and 8 are known to exist (this would make 9).

The body is completely solid with no rust-through in any of the bodywork or chassis, although there's scale underneath and some surface rust on the body as you'd expect. The doors still open and close like the proverbial bank vault, the hood fits flush, and the original dark blue paint is still stuck to the bodywork quite well. All the chrome pieces, including the special V16 fender streaks, are intact and in decent condition, although everything will need plating, but none of the pieces are broken, cracked, or missing. Glass is good with only two side windows with cracks and surprisingly little delamination. Lenses intact on everything from taillights to parking lights to fog lamps.

The interior was tan broadcloth and it's shot, but it's complete and could be easily used for patterns. Twin full-sized jump seats. All hardware, handles, knobs, interior lights, and garnish moldings present and in good condition. Steering wheel is deteriorated and wrapped in electrical tape, and the horn button is missing. Gauges all present, but no way to know if they work. The only notable damage on the entire car is the center grille on the dash, which has been damaged somehow.

The original 431 cubic inch flathead V16 remains intact and turns by hand with some effort. First year for the revised flathead V16 engine, which was both lighter and more powerful than the OHV version it replaced. Completely intact from air cleaners atop the original Carter carburetors to the original coils and wiring. Generator, water pump, radiator, etc. all in place and not deteriorated. Chassis has surface rust but nothing structural, and yes, that missing tire is included--the owner removed it and took it to the local tire store to have it patched so it would hold air so the car could be moved. Rolls and steers, but obviously does not run.

A remarkably complete and shockingly solid car, I'm sure you can see the potential here as well as I can. Not a cheap restoration, but not a difficult one, either, as everything is there and it needs no major surgery. Or, perhaps you freshen the interior, get it running, and just enjoy V16 luxury on a budget.

Available as-is, where-is for SOLD, and we're always open to offers. A very big car with a ton of potential for the right restorer. Don't tell me you aren't trying to figure out a way to take this one home, I know I did...

PS: Ignore the car next to it, it's not for sale.

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Edited by Matt Harwood
SOLD (see edit history)
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Good eye, West. Yes, it's a '39 Packard Twelve Brunn, and it's in similar condition to the Cadillac and has also been sitting for decades. The owner is not interested in selling that one at the moment.

There's also something vastly more special and remarkable in there that I daren't even mention, again stashed away for decades and partially disassembled with a top that goes down and a twin-cam 420 cubic inch straight-8. I have been specifically instructed to ask not about this forbidden thing!

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Art Deco opulence at it's finest. I can almost visualize the well to do owners stepping in with assistance to a go to a Broadway show or a gala Christmas party.

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twin-cam 420 cubic inch straight-8. I have been specifically instructed to ask not about this forbidden thing!

It took all of about 15 or 20 seconds for me to find out what you were describing. How many others will be able to? If the owner sees your post, he may get PO'd & terminate any deal or services you can offer him.

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I'm aware of one "unknown" car of the type that's being discussed in secret, if indeed the mystery car's name starts with a D and not a B.......I've mentioned the owner's name to the D's historians and they aren't aware of the car....I honestly don't think, as big as this world is, that anyone can definitively say that there are not unknown cars out there, unless they made X cars and X cars are known.....

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The car in question is definitely known and the owner is listed in the usual places. It is most definitely not for sale and he does prefer to stay somewhat anonymous about it, but it's not a secret. He often gets calls from other dealers fishing for a deal.

I wonder if I had listed the Brunn instead, would I be getting all these E-mails from people asking about the V16 Cadillac in the background and is it for sale? Everyone wants what they can't have, I suppose...

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I wonder if I had listed the Brunn instead, would I be getting all these E-mails from people asking about the V16 Cadillac in the background and is it for sale? Everyone wants what they can't have, I suppose...

Not from me. Been there done that, got the T-shirt and the 45 record, took it on a 3,000-mile tour (4.5mpg), etc. It was also somewhat of a barn find (Ontario, Canada. $900 in 1970). Smooth running engine.

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Guest Rob McDonald

Is it just my jaded, postwar eye or is this magnificent multi-cylinder Cadillac just about the homeliest upper-case-C Classic car you've ever seen? Along with many Grosser Mercedes-Benz of the same period, I think it belongs in the Ugly Classics thread over on the CCCA - General forum. Cripes, it's stubby and too long, all at the same time. Fabulous interior, though, and the car's unmuddled originality is precious. But if ever there was a case to be made for re-bodying a great chassis...

"PS: Ignore the car next to it, it's not for sale." (As if that's humanly possible.) Now there's a gorgeous car, at the pinnacle of Brunn's craft. I love those Scenic-Cruiser skylights but I don't see any landau irons. Apparently, it's "just" a faux-convertible, not a landaulet, which would be my died-and-gone-to-heaven car.

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Beauty is in eye of the beholder. I've always liked the 90 series Cadillacs with their opulent styling and all their excesses. It's a shame this car was poorly stored and left to deteriorate to it's current sad state.

I hope someone will return this car to its former glory.

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I'm aware of one "unknown" car of the type that's being discussed in secret, if indeed the mystery car's name starts with a D and not a B.......I've mentioned the owner's name to the D's historians and they aren't aware of the car....I honestly don't think, as big as this world is, that anyone can definitively say that there are not unknown cars out there, unless they made X cars and X cars are known.....

I'll stand by my comment :)

Of course it is possible but there really hasn't been a true discovery of a model J in 50 years. Sometimes nobody wants to admit it but every car is known by at least a few guys.

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Guest Water Jacket

Why o why, at this very late and presumably enlightened date, are we still ascribing 265 hp to the Duesenberg Model J (one of the above posters) ? "One more once," as Count Basie intoned near the end of April in Paris:

Huckster, stock market marauder E.L. Cord advertised 265 hp merely as he wanted to promote the most powerful car in the world, and a then extremely-limited, i think 50 copies made, Mercedes claimed 250hp. Richard Hough reported the J's long timing chain stretched at high engine speed, upsetting valve timing. John Bond visited the Lycoming plant in the early '50s, reported the best of four dynamometer results showing 208 hp.

Maurice Hendry reported that most Model Js in road trim were good for around 105 mph, having 3.8, 4, 4.1 and 4.3:1 rear axles, the two middle ones the most common. The J was a lavish, impressive car. For the quintuple the price of the lovelier 95-mph Chrysler Imperial, it should've been, as well as able to double as submarine and airplane.

Each ohv Marmon V-16, with 71 more cubic inches than the J, and higher compression, 3.78:1 axles, did two laps at the nearby Indy brickyard at an honest 105 mph before delivery. A 1982 SAE poll included the Marmon 16 among the 30 best automotive engines of the century. A late friend told me his wife could park his Marmon 16 sedan.

Have to wonder how many here gathered have ever worked on, driven or even ridden in a Model J. They were obsolete by 1932, and the SJ's steel connecting rods eagerly sought by J owners then and since. Topline Massey-Ferguson tractors were enameled and detailed every bit as well. It was the Depression, remember? You did what you could to sell anything to those who still had money.

Fred Duesenberg didn't even want to build the thing, preferring something closer to the size of the earlier Duesenberg Model A, which was the size of the underappreciated Stutz DV16/DV32 offering the J's attributes in a much more rationally sized and priced package.

I agree with the above poster about preferring the Packard Brunn to the Cadillac. The big Packards of the '30s always had a finer line, crispness than the ordinance vehicle looking Cadillacs. Meanwhile, we do these cars and the future of the dying CCCA, no service by regurgitating this myth, hyperbole, malarkey. You want to attract new blood, try historical accuracy, honest overview, perspective.

But perhaps the above's to be expected with a club where everyone owns a "classic" three-main-bearing '41 Cadillac that shares every piece of sheet metal with a '41 Pontiac (check the Fisher Body Manual), while drooling over the overblown Mercedes 500/540K, the ridiculous front end of which Richard Stein dismissed as looking like the bemedaled Hermann Goering.

That all old cars have their merits or are peachy keen isn't the point. I like Hudsons and Packard 120s. So what? The point IS that if the Classic Car Club of America is going to retain any credibility after allowing hohum like wood-paneled '40s Chryslers, to mean something, and attract new blood to replace the golf pants/ugly sport coat you could have these cars painted any color you wanted type who are dying off, it's time we have a little more reverence for fact than fiction.

It's telling that someone moved this discussion of Classic cars from the CCCA Buy/Sell Forum, where it was somehow "inappropriate" to here on the non-Classic AACA Buy/Sell Forum, without replying to any of the facts and figures above. The CCCA today, unfortunately, has been hijacked by those whose main interest is the latest auction results, trophy chase, hence the embrace of the aforementioned myth, jokingly or not. And the stunt of moving this exchange from the site where it belongs to the South 40 only underscores that the CCCA's site is really about online fiefdoms, cabals for a few who inherited daddy's wherewithall and cars.

Edited by Water Jacket (see edit history)
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I think it's all a matter of preferences.

Personally, I don't care if the Dusenberg J drives like it has square wheels, I want one desperately. I can't explain why, but I do. The legend is surely bigger than the reality, but the reality is pretty friggin' spectacular, no? My '29 Cadillac drives like a city bus with a broken power steering pump, yet I love to climb behind the wheel and look for every excuse to do so. So forget for a moment about practicality and the comparative virtues of each make and model, and just remember that this diversity is why all cars didn't evolve into an Isetta, which is the practical limit for enclosed transportation. Packards are magnificent, but their magnificence does nothing to diminish the magnificence of a Duesenberg or Mercedes or V16 Cadillac.

I stood in front of this particular V16 Cadillac for a long time and tried to use my imagination's ear to hear all 16 cylinders purring away under the hood, finely tuned and smooth, but not quite silent, with a muscular hum coming from someplace far away. Take a moment and do the same thing--what does it sound like to you?

If you want to talk about driving dynamics, I have a client and good friend who is 92 years old. He owned what was widely regarded as the finest collection of pre-war European cars in the world, a collection he recently sold for a number between eight and nine figures. He has owned and driven literally everything, from an Alfa Romeo 8C to a Bugatti to a Mercedes SSK to a Bentley 8-litre LeMans touring (the definitive 8-Litre), and yes, more than a few Packards and two Duesenbergs. In his long life collecting and restoring cars, he did it because he enjoyed driving them, although his cars have also been on the awards stand at Pebble Beach. His collection still includes mid-30s Packards, both 8s and 12s and including one of the Darrin convertible sedans, a Chrysler Imperial, several V12 Lincoln Continentals, half a dozen Silver Ghosts, a Riley roadster, and even a bunch of early V8 Fords, '40s Buicks, a V12 Cadillac, and a few '40s Mopars. He is still buying, trading, and selling anything that appeals to him at the moment, and he drives them all, decides which will stay, and sells the rest.

So one day I asked him if he could have only one hobby car, what would it be? He thought long and hard, and given his predilection for driving and enjoying his cars, I knew it would be something sporty. He chose the Alfa Romeo 8C 2600 roadster that he owned. But then he paused, smiled, and said, "But you know, a 1948 Plymouth convertible is awfully good."

This is a gentleman who knows great cars and great driving cars, has owned and driven virtually everything in the spectrum, and in his wise and authoritative opinion, a Plymouth is superior to all of them.

So no, I don't think it's just about horsepower and driving dynamics. Love what you love and don't try to explain it. Love is funny that way, and the minute that kind of passion and feeling goes out of this hobby, I'm out too.

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Mr. Jacket

Good grief. I was only trying to add a little humor. I don't believe Duesenberg's advertised horsepower ratings either. I was merely asking which version Duesenberg Matt was referring based on the "known" figures. If I had asked using the "rumored" numbers, the joke wouldn't have made any sense. If you want to help us attract younger members, you'll need to stop posting that type of irrelevant and arrogant response. It was an answer to a question that wasn't asked.

Edited by West Peterson (see edit history)
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No worries, West. I certainly put the bait out there, and I think a spirited conversation is always welcome. The V16 is what it is, everybody's seen it, the rest is just lively talk between fellow hobbyists. It's as if we're all standing around the car having a chat after we all looked it over and shared our opinions. Let it ride!

Edited by Matt Harwood
Typo (see edit history)
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Good catch. It might very well be black, but it sure looks blue in photos, doesn't it? I'm still inclined to believe it's original paint, however, as there are no obvious signs of a repaint. Might just have been the light that fooled me. I should have looked at the body tag more carefully, since my gut was telling me it was black when I first saw it. Once we get it out in the sunlight we'll know for sure. It hasn't seen the sun in a long, long time...

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No, it has actually be in this family's possession since at least the late '60s here in Cleveland. The owner's father bought it, along with dozens of other cars, and kept them stashed all over the place, and we're just now digging everything out. I find things like this fascinating--how could you own such a thing and not want to drive and enjoy it? On the other hand, when opportunity knocks, you grab it and worry about the rest later, right?

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I bet it is an interesting cache, Matt. Some people just like to accumulate and condition is less important. I have always preferred one or two good vehicles to a handfull of projects, but the "hoarders" are a big part of saving these cars and in time, they become available...

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Guest Foggy norm

Allways loved that old black/blue paint, I called it Ink blue, tho I knew it was oxidation. Many old black car's give that impression.

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