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Duesenberg mention in "Fate of the Sleeping Beauties&qu

  • Cargirl
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03 Apr 2011 12:36 #19726 by Cargirl
Replied by Cargirl on topic Fate of the Sleeping Beauties
I sent Ard op de Weegh, a friend and author of Fate of the Sleeping Beauties, the link to the ACD club mention. He will be very pleased to know his book is being recommended by Cord and Duesenberg lovers as well as Bugattistes.

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  • Chris Summers
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11 Feb 2011 02:23 #19182 by Chris Summers
Remember, they were "just old cars" once. The latest outright junkings of Js I am aware of occurred in the late 1950s.

Chris Summers
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H.H. Franklin Club

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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  • Mike Brady
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11 Feb 2011 01:42 #19180 by Mike Brady
I can think of a suitable punishment for neglecting these cars and scrapping them.

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  • Chris Summers
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11 Feb 2011 00:04 #19177 by Chris Summers
Just what I have, for what it's worth:

Ray Wolff believed the (Jerome) Medrano (of Paris) car was chassis 2219 with a Faux Cabriolet body by Letourneur et Marchand. He guessed at J-201 as the engine number but there is no definitive proof.

Two Faux Cabriolets were definitively built, one light-colored and one dark-colored, one purportedly for Medrano and the other for the Marquis de Portago, one with chassis 2219 reportedly and the other J-466 / 2484. I have seen both ownerships and both sets of numbers reported for each car and never any definitive information.

Neither car has been seen for decades and most believe them to have been destroyed.

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Chris Summers
ACD Club
CCCA
H.H. Franklin Club

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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10 Feb 2011 19:51 #19175 by alsancle
I believe Randy Emma tracked this one all the way to the scrap yard. Hopefully he sees this and tells us the story. I don't remember it well enough to do it justice.

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  • Angelo Van Bogart
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10 Feb 2011 15:38 #19174 by Angelo Van Bogart
I have been enjoying the book ?The Fate of the Sleeping Beauties,? which provides an update of the eight Bugattis, two Cords and dozens of other interesting cars acquired by Michel Dovaz in Europe as early as the 1950s and photographed as decaying relics on his estate in the 1980s. The photographs of these moss-covered Classics debuted before American eyes in Automobile Quarterly Vol. 22, No. 2.

Dovaz has written the foreword for this book, and in it, he mentions the unwanted state of 1930s cars in the postwar era. He was able to acquire many of his cars, including the Bugattis and Cords, for a mere pittance. He also mentions a Duesenberg he had been hoping to buy, which will be of interest to fellow ACD-ers:

??I used to go regularly to look at a Duesenberg near Porte de Vincennes, where there were many secondhand dealers. Years later the motoring journalist and collecter (sic) Serge Pozzoli told me that he also had often examined this strange two-seater with aluminium engine block and bodywork. On the cowling there was a panel with many Bugatti patents. The car had almost certainly been the property of the circus owner Medrano. I really wanted to have the Duesenberg, but when I had finally solved the storage problem, aluminium prices had shot up due to the Vietnam war. The dealer, who left the unsaleable car out in the open, had meanwhile sold it to a scrap merchant!?

It?s difficult to determine which Duesenberg Dovaz is referring to, but the guessing could be fun for fellow club members.

I highly recommend the book. I pre-ordered it through the publisher ( www.veloce.co.uk ) and I am sure it?s now available on Amazon or eBay.

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