Flaming Duesenbergs at Pebble Beach

The Duesenberg that I spoke of above was the two toned tan dual cowl at the benifit auction. If you look under the left hood panel you can still see some charcoal deposits and a bad weld.

Do any of you remember seeing the big blue car hauler called BLUE THUNDER at any of the meets? I drove Blue Thunder and hauled cars to car events for many years. At Pebble Beach we usually showed one or two Duesenbergs, and occasionally other stuff.

One morning at about four AM (early bird gets the worm, right?) we were unloading cars up on the polo field in preperation for the show. I was outside the truck, doing early AM unload stuff when I head the other Jerry Moore helper messing with a Murphy bodied SWB dual cowl phaeton we were going to show. After messing with it for quite awhile he got out and walked away. "Great," I thought, "he's overheated it," cause I saw steam pouring out from under the hood. "Wait a minute," thought I, "steam would be coming from the front of the hood/" I rand over, opened the hood, and fire shot up ten feet in the air. No time for finesse, so I grabbed a fire quelcher and hosed it down with ansul powder. We spent most of the morning, til the show, cleaning ansul powder off the engine and figuring out how to open the hood so the burned patches in the paint weren't obvious.

Wait the title said Duesenbergs, plural.

Not ten minutes later we torched off a 1935 cabriolet, the all steel Duesenberg with the Belgian body. Jerry loved starting fluid, he did, and he hosed that car down and yelled out for it to be started. The ignition gnited that air cleaner full of starting fluid and a column of fire shot fifteen feet in the air. It settled down to an air cleaner fire. With my bare hands I'm trying to take the air cleaner off, scorching my pinkies in the process. The helper walked by and I asked for the towel he had in his pocket. He ignored me and contnued on toward the truck, Jerry, who can be quite vocal, yelled for the towel. The helper said, "This is my good towel," and continued on. Jerry, who was known for the occasional outburst, said some mean things to him, and threatened damage to various parts of his body if that towel was not delivered to us. It was, and I was able to get the air cleaner off.

All in all, a hell of a morning.