In the autumn of 1928, Fred and Augie Duesenberg unveiled a car that had no business existing.

The Model J was not a refinement. It was a declaration. Its straight-eight engine produced 265 horsepower — more than double the output of any American production car, more than most racing engines of the period. The crankshaft alone weighed 120 pounds. The block was finished in green enamel. Every moving part was balanced by hand.

The chassis cost $8,500. The coachwork — because nobody bought a Duesenberg without coachwork — could push the total past $25,000. In 1929, that was the price of a house. Two houses. A man could buy a Ford for $500 and drive it for ten years. The Duesenberg was not made for that man.

It was made for the Vanderbilts, the Hearsts, the movie stars. Gary Cooper owned one. Greta Garbo owned one. Clark Gable, Mae West, the Duke of Windsor. King Alfonso XIII of Spain ordered two before he was deposed. The car did not discriminate between aristocrats and entertainers. It only discriminated against the poor.

Fred Duesenberg was an immigrant. Born in Lippe, Germany, in 1876, he came to Iowa as a child and grew up fixing bicycles. He raced before he manufactured. He built marine engines during the First World War, then aircraft engines, then the racing powerplants that won the Indianapolis 500 in 1924, 1925, and 1927. His name was already legendary on the circuit when the Model J arrived.

The engine was an engineering marvel by any standard of any decade. The dual-overhead-cam straight-eight displaced 420 cubic inches. It breathed through a single updraft carburetor but produced its power so smoothly that contemporary testers described the acceleration as 'turbine-like.' It could propel the 5,000-pound car past 115 miles per hour — this at a time when highways were two lanes and gravel.

But Fred had a problem: he was an engineer, not a businessman. E. L. Cord was the businessman. Cord had bought Duesenberg in 1926, and it was Cord's money and Cord's ambition that financed the Model J. Fred designed; Cord sold. The arrangement worked, but it was never equal.

The coachbuilders were where the car became art. Murphy, Derham, Judkins, Willoughby, LeBaron, Hibbard & Darrin in Paris, Figoni in France, Graber in Switzerland — the finest body shops on two continents competed for Duesenberg commissions. No two cars were identical. Each was hand-formed in aluminum or steel over ash frameworks, painted in as many as twenty coats of lacquer, and trimmed in leather that took six hides.

The dashboard was machined from engine-turned aluminum. The instruments included an altimeter, a stopwatch, and a tachometer. There was a warning light system that told the driver when to change oil, when to add water to the battery, and when the chassis needed greasing — automation that would not become standard for another fifty years.

By 1932, even the Model J was not enough. The supercharged SJ arrived, its centrifugal blower boosting output to 320 horsepower. The short-wheelbase SSJ — only two were ever built, both for Gary Cooper and Clark Gable — is generally considered the most desirable American car ever made. One sold at auction in 2018 for $22 million.

Fred Duesenberg died in 1932, from injuries sustained in a car accident on Ligonier Mountain in Pennsylvania. He was 55. There is bitter irony in the finest car maker of his generation dying behind the wheel, but the car he was driving was not a Duesenberg. It was a Cord L-29.

Production continued without him, but the Depression was doing what no competitor could. The people who could afford a Duesenberg were now a smaller circle than ever, and many of them were pretending they could not. Conspicuous consumption had become politically dangerous. By 1937, it was over. Approximately 481 Model Js were built. About 378 are believed to survive.

What the Duesenberg represented was uniquely American: the audacity to build the best car in the world without a century of tradition behind you. Rolls-Royce had heritage. Mercedes-Benz had lineage. Duesenberg had talent, ambition, and the stubborn belief that an immigrant from Iowa could outbuild them all.

He was right. For nine years, he was absolutely right.

And then the world moved on.