Every Duesenberg Model, Ranked From Model A to the SSJ

Table of Contents

• The short version
• Model A: the car that started it
• Model X: the forgotten bridge car
• Model J: the one everyone means when they say “Duesenberg”
• SJ: the supercharged version
• SSJ: two cars, and only two
• JN: the last of the line
• Comparison table
• What they’re actually worth now
• Where to see one in person

The short version

If you only remember one thing: “Duesenberg” almost always means the Model J and its variants, built between 1928 and 1937. The earlier Model A and Model X get skipped over in casual conversation, but they matter — the A was the first American production car with hydraulic brakes on all four wheels, three years before anyone else bothered.

Fred and August Duesenberg built five distinct model lines in total: A, X, J, SJ (including the SSJ), and JN. Production numbers shrink at every step. Roughly 650 Model As left the factory. Only two SSJs exist, period, and one of them belonged to Gary Cooper.

Model A: the car that started it

The Model A arrived in 1921 as America’s first production straight-eight, at a time when most manufacturers were still arguing over whether six cylinders was excessive. It paired that engine with four-wheel hydraulic brakes — a genuine first for a U.S. production car, years before Chrysler made the feature famous in 1924.

The straight-eight displaced 4.3 liters and made around 88 horsepower, which sounds modest until you remember 1920s luxury cars were making 60. Duesenberg built roughly 650 Model As through 1926, each one bodied to order since the company sold rolling chassis, not finished cars. Buyers took the chassis to a coachbuilder and specified everything from there.

The Model A never sold in volume and never made Duesenberg money. What it did was prove the brothers could engineer something genuinely ahead of the field, which is exactly the reputation E.L. Cord bought when he acquired the company in 1926.

Model X: the forgotten bridge car

Between the Model A and the Model J sits the Model X, and most histories skip it entirely because so few survive to talk about. Built only in 1927 and 1928, the X was essentially a transitional update to the A’s chassis and engine — same basic architecture, some mechanical refinement, a slightly higher compression ratio.

Fewer than 20 Model Xs were built, and estimates of surviving examples run in the single digits. It’s less a distinct model than an X marks the spot on the timeline between “the company Fred and August built” and “the company E.L. Cord relaunched.” If you find a Model X at auction, it’s a genuine event — most classic car people have never seen one in person.

Model J: the one everyone means when they say “Duesenberg”

Cord relaunched the brand in 1928 with a mandate: build the best car in America, full stop, cost be damned. The Model J delivered. A 6.9-liter double-overhead-cam straight-eight, built by Lycoming to Duesenberg’s spec, produced 265 horsepower at a time when a Cadillac V8 made about 90. Top speed cleared 116 mph in an era when most luxury sedans struggled past 80.

Like the Model A, the J sold as a bare chassis — buyers paid for the engineering, then commissioned coachwork from Murphy, LeBaron, Rollston, or Derham. A finished J in 1929 could run $13,000 to $19,000, against roughly $1,500 for a top-line Cadillac. That’s not a premium; that’s a different category of purchase entirely.

Duesenberg built 481 Model J chassis between 1928 and 1937, and roughly 378 are believed to survive today — an extraordinary survival rate for a car this old, largely because owners who could afford a Duesenberg in 1930 could also afford to keep it running through the Depression rather than scrap it.

SJ: the supercharged version

Starting in 1932, Duesenberg offered a supercharged variant of the J, badged SJ. The centrifugal supercharger pushed output to a claimed 320 horsepower — enough to make the SJ credibly one of the fastest cars in the world at the time, with a top speed pushing past 130 mph.

You can spot an SJ at a glance: external exhaust pipes exit the hood side louvers, chromed and curved, purely because engineers realized routing the exhaust that way reduced heat buildup under the hood. It became the car’s signature visual, copied on countless replica bodies since. Only 36 SJs were built, all on the existing J chassis, which is part of why unsupercharged Js were sometimes retrofitted later — SJ bodywork carried (and still carries) a real premium.

SSJ: two cars, and only two

The SSJ is the short-wheelbase version of the SJ — literally, the chassis was shortened by more than a foot to create a lighter, more agile roadster. Duesenberg built exactly two. One went to Clark Gable, the other to Gary Cooper, both commissioned in 1935.

Both cars survive. The Gable/Cooper SSJ that stayed in the Duesenberg family’s own hands sold at auction in 2018 for $22 million, the highest price ever paid for an American car at auction. That single sale reset the ceiling for what people assumed a pre-war American car could be worth.

JN: the last of the line

The JN was the final variant, built in 1935 and 1936 as the company was already winding down under Cord’s collapsing empire. Ten were built, mounted on a shorter chassis with more modern coachwork by LaGrande — a subsidiary of Rollston, brought in-house to standardize bodies as the company’s finances tightened.

The JN represents Duesenberg trying to modernize its silhouette for the late ’30s while the money to do much else had already dried up. Cord’s business empire folded in 1937, and with it went Duesenberg — the brand wouldn’t build another car for decades, and the various revival attempts since never approached the original’s engineering or reputation.

Comparison table

Model	Years	Engine	Horsepower	Units Built	Est. Survivors
Model A	1921–1926	4.3L straight-eight	~88 hp	~650	Handful, exact count unclear
Model X	1927–1928	4.3L straight-eight	~90 hp	<20	Single digits
Model J	1928–1937	6.9L DOHC straight-eight	265 hp	481 chassis	~378
SJ	1932–1937	6.9L supercharged straight-eight	~320 hp	36	Most survive
SSJ	1935	6.9L supercharged, short chassis	~320 hp	2	2
JN	1935–1936	6.9L straight-eight	265 hp	10	Most survive

What they’re actually worth now

Values vary enormously by body and coachbuilder, not just model designation — a Murphy-bodied convertible and a formal LeBaron sedan on the same J chassis can differ by a factor of three or more. As a rough guide for what’s actually traded in recent years:

• Model J, closed body (sedan/limousine): $400,000–$900,000
• Model J, open body (convertible/phaeton), notable coachbuilder: $1.5 million–$3 million
• SJ: $3 million–$6 million, depending on body and originality
• SSJ: effectively priceless — one sale on record, at $22 million

Originality matters more here than in almost any other collector category. A numbers-matching J with its original coachwork and an unbroken ownership chain commands a real premium over a car that’s been rebodied or reengined, which happened often enough in the mid-20th century that provenance research is its own specialty.

Where to see one in person

You don’t need auction money to see these cars up close. The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana — housed in the brand’s actual former showroom — holds one of the largest public Duesenberg collections anywhere, including multiple Model Js. The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles and the Nethercutt Collection in Sylmar both rotate Duesenbergs through their displays as well, and Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance regularly features Js and SJs in its pre-war classes if you want to see one running rather than static.