Multi-Year Pebble Beach Participant

Known Ownership from New

ACD Category 1 vehicle

This 1931 Duesenberg Model J combines the rare combination of very rare coachwork on a short wheelbase chassis with known ownership of some of the country’s most notable collectors.

Originally sold to John Payne of New York City with a sedan body from Derham, the present LeBaron convertible sedan coachwork with installed in 1933 when Mr. Payne traded the car back in to Duesenberg which at the time was a somewhat common practice. For the next decade the car had several owners in the New York City metropolitan area, selling to Buffalo, NY resident Marion S. Roberts, who also acquired a Derham-bodied sedan (chassis 338) at the same time.

Roberts was an aircraft mechanic who also owned a shop that worked on luxury cars of the period with a specialty in Duesenbergs. Ironically, neither car got much attention in his two decades of ownership and were then purchased by Judge John North.

Mr. North passed ownership of the cars to noted Duesenberg collector Homer Fitterling of South Bend, IN who moved this body and firewall 2152, along with the original numbered bell housing and crankshaft to the chassis of the other Derham bodied chassis. At that time he also added the chrome side exhaust from the supercharged Duesenberg models.

In 1989 Georgia carpet manufacturer Ed Weaver acquired Fitterling’s collection, in a near-successful attempt to create the world’s largest collection of Duesenberg automobiles. His passing led to the car’s acquisition by the Johnson family from British Columbia in 1995, who sold the automobile to the renowned Peterson Museum in Los Angeles in 2003.

After serving as an exhibit in the museum for a decade, noted California collector Aarn Weiss purchased the car in 2013 and commissioned the restoration of the vehicle at the hands of marque experts with the car being shown at the prestigious Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 2018. This exquisite automobile became a part of the Evergreen Historic Autos portfolio in January 2023.

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