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When I wrote about Classic Car Services’ restoration of the Pebble Beach-winning Mormon Meteor for Hemmings Classic Car last year, shop owner Chris Charlton told me that one of the many challenges in returning the car to its original condition was recreating the two head fairings, which had been lost. Well, by an amazing stroke of luck, they’ve been found – as have four of the car’s original wheels, and three of its distinctive, orangewall Firestone tires.
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Chris had taken the car to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club show in Auburn, Indiana, and was explaining the changes that had to be made in the car to return it to its 1935 configuration: The doors were eliminated, the U-shaped exhaust was replaced with a straight pipe, and the head fairings were added. Many visitors wanted to know the story behind the the wild orange wheels with wide orange sidewalls that the car wore, and Chris explained that they were true to the original. (The Meteor wore its alternate wheels, shown in the first photo, at Pebble Beach, but Chris had also made up a set of orange wheels.)
“That’s when a guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘I think I have the original head fairings for that car,’” Chris said. They had been included in a lot of car parts the man had bought at auction in Indianapolis decades earlier. “At the same auction, a friend of his bought another lot, and he got the wheels.” The car’s owner, Harry Yeaggy, was able to track them down and purchase them, and Chris showed them to me when I visited his shop in Oxford, Maine, this fall.
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One of the tires was a whitewall, but Chris did a little scrubbing and found orange beneath. He said photos of the Meteor taken after its Salt Flats days showed it with whitewalls, and theorized that they might have been some of the original orangewalls with white paint applied. The hub on the wheel above was long ago cut out – more on that in a moment.
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When Ab Jenkins headed to the flats for his history-shattering endurance record runs, he brought with him 20 or so wheels and tires, Chris said. The Mormon Meteor was unusual among Duesenbergs in that it had 18-inch rims, the only size in which high-speed racing tires were available. Duesenberg had used 19-inch wheels with split rims, and then changed over to 17-inch dropped-center rims. One 18-inch wheel would have been of no use to a Duesenberg owner, but its hub would have been – that’s probably why the hub of that wheel was crudely removed. Chris said he’s aware of one other Duesenberg running on 18-inch wheels, which presumably came from the Meteor’s backup stash. All of the tires, and the best of the wheels, will be kept in original condition and displayed with the car.
