"Baby Duesenberg" 1934

[nb]

This was a prototype of a car designed by Gordon Buehrig and built by coachbuilder Walker on an Auburn chassis. Originally the car was supposed to become a lower priced version of Duesenberg. The styling of the car was further developed in the design of the Cord sedan. However these are totally different cars, and apart from front bumper, this 3D model is completelly different from the Cord I have done earlier.

"Baby Duesenberg" was a rear-wheel drive, had a straight-eight engine, and was built on a contemporary Auburn chassis. Cord was a front-wheel drive with a V8 engine and had a semi-unitary body construction.

"Baby Duesenberg" has not survived, and little data on the car is available. No blueprints whatsoever... There are three patents available at the US Patent Office website that contain some drawings of the car. I was also very lucky to get the archive photos of the car.

[NightEye]

It's a masterpiece!
Could you post a pic or two of the original prototype? I'm quite curious how it looks (since Google isn't quite reliable).

Looks really nice, top work!
The only thing I could crit is the round thing (fuel cap??) on the fender. It doesn't look round

[Silent][Moebius]

well i don't think anybody can crit on accuracy but the model looks mighty fine very smooth and the chrome and color looks great!

[nb]

To NightEye:

There are two images of the original car on my website:
http://www.eevamoritz.com/babyd.html
There's another image here:
http://www.automaven.com/Cord_Histor.../chapter_1.htm
In the October 1933 - April 1934 section click on "A protype body" link.

[NightEye]

Okay, thanks
Looks pretty accurate if you ask me

[kosso_olli]

We really need more of these old cars here. Very well done!!!

[palat]

Nikko Moritz has done it again.
Awesome piece of modeling and rendering.
Although this looks anything but a Duesenberg, consider it's from 1934 and the BigThree stylists would take about five years to crank out similar designs.
I miss larger views on your site, not only of this particular Duesenberg but of the other vintage models.
What's next on the works?

[Johnas]

Brilliant work indeed always nice to see classics here. Larger renders would be nice to see

[nb]

Thanks everybody for nice comments!

When rendering, I was (not surprisingly) thinking a lot about the design. Contemporary Chrysler Airflow was considerably more advanced in technological terms, but it was also ugly too
Here are some facts and thoughts:

Interestingly, in 1933 GM organized design content among its own designers. At that time Buehrig worked for GM. This particular design was considered THE WORST! Then Buehrig went to work for Duesenberg and even patented the design!!! I strongly doubt that this would be possible today ;-). Attached is Buehrig’s reproduction done in the 50’s of the original contest drawing.

Today there still exist a Duesenberg which, apart from being a coupe, has a very similar design. The car was built in 1934 by (surprise, surprise) coachbuilder Walker. The car is (most probably) owned by Jay Leno; some images are available on the net, for example here: http://www.vintageweb.net/ccpa/pbusa.htm

So what’s the moral? I think this was a sort of typical contemporary coachbuilder-style design that required lots of skilled hand work, and was applicable to bespoke luxury cars rather then intended for mass production. I can speculate that this was the reason why it was rejected by GM, and the reason why later Cord was not able to manufacture the cars in volumes needed for survival of the company. I guess the introduction of this seemingly very advanced design in the form of Cord simply raised the shares of the company, so the owners could get rid of them, as they knew that the company was doomed anyway.

What am I doing next? I’m currently working on a down-to-earth Chevrolet 1948 pickup. I also have some other unfinished projects like a 1938-39 Delahaye 165 by Figoni and Falaschi, but this is even more difficult than baby Duesenberg. And as I’m doing this on my free time, I can not set any deadlines. I do have higher resolution versions of everything, but the space on (my wife’s) webpage that I’m using for my own stuff is rather limited.

[DrumBoPing]

i love to see some old style stuff looks good, cant wait to see the other one

[palat]

Man, i think it's about time you think of your own web space.
Costs very little, although you may have to upgrade from personal to professional and then to commercial if it come to exceed bandwidth limit (that's what happened to me). Your work deserves full exposure -- and larger renders.

[giant551]

Its really nice to see old beauties like this !! great modelling