When about five years old, I began building models and continued off and on all my life—cars, airplanes, boats, trains, finally learning about 25 years ago that people were building models that actually ran under their own power! Some simple models followed with steam power leading to an 1895 American-LaFrance fire engine, a 9-cylinder Bentley rotary aircraft engine and finally the Duesenberg, beginning about six years or 15,000 hours ago.

It was necessary to earn a living until retirement. The above early interests had led to a 40-year career in mechanical engineering, the last ten as Director of Engineering of the Leggett & Platt Corporation Automotive Group, then on to become a full-time model engineer.

J.L. Elbert’s “Duesenberg” book was purchased in 1955 followed by acquiring anything I could about the car. I was around them in the early 60's when we had a 1930 Cadillac convertible used in Grand Classic contesting (a seven-year restoration).

When the decision was reached to model the Duesenberg, June and I made a trip to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. Jon Bill helped me through the drawers of drawings, pulling about 60, which he had reproduced. They were the basis although about half weren’t applicable. When traveling to Auburn, stops at the restoration shop of Charles Glick in Paris, IL also proved very informative.

Upon learning about Brian Joseph’s Classic and Exotic Car Service in Troy, Michigan I telephoned and asked if I could visit. This was the first of twelve or so trips there with Brian allowing me to remove parts from inventory, photographing and measure them, and, of course, answering questions and later telling me the model was out of scale here or there. He was very much a mentor on this project, and it is difficult to thank him sufficiently for his time and consideration.

Visits were made to Randy Ema’s shop in Orange, California where he verified from record the last “J” number and frame number, hence my use of J-589 that is now the last operating Duesy built. He has an eight-branch exhaust manifold that I scaled and was able to note detail from a supercharged engine belonging to Jay Leno in Randy’s shop. Jay allowed photographing and detailing from his roadable chassis, an appreciated courtesy. Skip Marketti with the Nethercutt Museum helped on supercharged engines and answered questions during two visits there. He offered the compliment of exhibiting the model in the museum at some point.

Bill Miller has graciously permitted the measuring of body contour from his LaGrande dual cowl phaeton. A unique project does require research and help from many, doesn’t it?

Data from the research trips needed to be reduced to scale, sketched and dimensioned. I don’t formally draft any more than necessary and use CAD minimally. The sketches are scribbled all over during part production and finally corrected to what I actually did!

Following the research stage, much time was spent building tooling: jigs, fixtures, cutters, ad nauseum, to where typically more time is invested in preparation than in making parts. I often wondered if the engine really needed 32 valves, couldn’t 16 do? At some time in the future I wish to have a meeting with Fred and his designers and ask why it had to have all those parts.