A Duesenberg SSJ Claims Pebble Beach’s 75th-Anniversary Crown

There are victories that reward perfection, and others that confirm mythology. When Harry Yeaggy guided a black 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster onto the presentation ramp at Pebble Beach, the judges bestowed both. The car was named Best of Show at the 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on 16 August 2026.

It prevailed over a field of 218 automobiles, including 33 international entries from 14 countries. Its closest rivals for the crown included a 1938 Delahaye 165 Cabriolet, a 1955 Ferrari 375 MM Berlinetta and a 1954 Ferrari 375 America Cabriolet.

Yet the SSJ possessed a combination that even Pebble Beach rarely encounters: extreme scarcity, formidable engineering, restrained sporting coachwork and a provenance intertwined with Hollywood’s golden age. It is not merely an important Duesenberg. It represents the most concentrated expression of what the marque could achieve.

An American victory for a milestone concours

The setting made the result especially resonant. Pebble Beach’s anniversary gathering celebrated 75 editions of a concours that has evolved from a companion to local road racing into one of the collector-car world’s defining occasions.

Across the 18th fairway, the 2026 field ranged from early speedsters and American classics to royal automobiles, preservation cars, Le Mans-winning Ferraris and Japanese competition machinery. Against that breadth of design and history, the compact Duesenberg emerged as the day’s most complete proposition.

The result also extended Duesenberg’s record as the most successful American marque in Pebble Beach Best of Show competition. It now holds eight victories. For Yeaggy, the moment marked a return to the summit after his 2007 win with the 1935 Duesenberg SJ speed-record car known as the Mormon Meteor.

Those two winning cars reveal the breadth of his collection. The Mormon Meteor was conceived to sustain extraordinary speed over immense distances. The SSJ translated a related appetite for performance into a shorter, more intimate road car intended to command Hollywood as convincingly as a Duesenberg commanded a straight road.

The shortest and sharpest Duesenberg

The initials SSJ were never a formal factory model designation. They became collector shorthand for two exceptional supercharged Model Js built on specially shortened chassis. At 125 inches, their wheelbase was substantially more compact than that of a conventional Model J, changing both the proportions and the character of the automobile.

Their open roadster bodies were designed by J. Herbert Newport Jr and produced by Central Manufacturing Company under the LaGrande name. The body is pared back by Duesenberg standards: a long bonnet, low windscreen, abbreviated cockpit and tightly resolved tail, without the expanses of formal coachwork associated with the marque’s grandest town cars and phaetons.

The resulting silhouette is muscular rather than monumental. Its front wings rise with measured drama, while the short distance between the axles gives the car an unusual visual tension. The bonnet remains vast, but the body appears gathered around the machinery instead of merely carried by it.

Beneath that bonnet sits Duesenberg’s twin-overhead-camshaft, 32-valve straight-eight. In SSJ specification, the supercharged 420-cubic-inch engine is generally credited with close to 400 bhp, aided by twin carburettors and the distinctive ram’s-horn intake arrangement developed from the marque’s speed-record work. For a road car conceived in the mid-1930s, the figure remains startling.

The truth behind the Clark Gable connection

The winning car is invariably introduced through Clark Gable, although the precise wording matters. It is better understood as the Duesenberg associated with Gable than as a car conclusively purchased by him.

The two Special Speedsters were placed with Gable and fellow actor Gary Cooper as an early exercise in celebrity-led promotion. Both men were genuine motoring enthusiasts, making them unusually credible ambassadors for Duesenberg’s fastest road-going creation.

Cooper ultimately bought the sister car. Surviving historical accounts indicate that Gable did not take up the offer to purchase his example after its extended loan. The car was subsequently sold to Georgie Stoll, the MGM musical director and conductor.

That distinction does little to diminish the provenance. The SSJ was created for Gable’s use and became inseparable from his automotive legend. More importantly, its history illustrates how Duesenberg attempted to position advanced engineering and American glamour as two parts of the same idea.

Restoration as interpretation

The 2026 winner has recently been restored and now presents in deep black lacquer with a light saddle leather interior. The monochrome bodywork gives its shape unusual clarity. Bright metal is deployed as punctuation rather than spectacle, from the mesh bonnet panels to the wheel covers and narrow windscreen frame.

That restraint suits the car. An SSJ does not need elaborate colour separation or ornamental coachwork to communicate importance. Its authority comes from proportion, stance and the visible suggestion of mechanical force.

Restoring any celebrated Duesenberg requires more than immaculate craftsmanship. The task involves resolving layers of evolving specification, previous finishes and sometimes contradictory historical descriptions. With a car as frequently discussed as the Gable-associated SSJ, every decision becomes an interpretation of documentary and physical evidence.

Pebble Beach evaluates historical accuracy and technical merit alongside elegance. The Best of Show decision therefore recognises not only the completed aesthetic effect but the depth of work required to present a machine of this significance at the highest level.

Why the SSJ occupies a category of its own

Rarity alone does not make a great collector car, but the existence of only two SSJs establishes an exceptional foundation. Both possess the full hierarchy of desirable qualities: unmistakable design, advanced engineering, Hollywood provenance and a place at the final, most ambitious edge of Duesenberg production.

The sister car associated with Gary Cooper demonstrated the market’s appreciation in 2018, when it sold at Pebble Beach for $22 million. At the time, the result established auction records for an American automobile and for a pre-war car. Its significance lay not simply in the number, but in what collectors were valuing: originality, scarcity, engineering audacity and an unrepeatable cultural narrative.

The Gable-associated car offers a different proposition. Its recent restoration places the emphasis on formal presentation and historical reconstruction rather than the preserved character for which the Cooper car was celebrated. Together, the pair demonstrate two legitimate approaches to stewardship at the highest level of collecting.

Neither can be substituted. The existence of one enhances, rather than reduces, the importance of the other. To encounter both is to see Duesenberg’s ultimate road car through complementary lenses: one carrying the material passage of time, the other restored to concours precision.

A crown that reaches beyond beauty

Pebble Beach Best of Show is never a simple beauty contest. The winning automobile must survive close scrutiny of its engineering, history, restoration and visual coherence before standing above the first-place cars from every class.

The SSJ’s success is therefore a judgement on the whole object. Its Hollywood associations may draw the first glance, but they cannot explain the final trophy. That rests on the way its compact chassis, Newport-designed body and extraordinary powertrain form a singular expression of American confidence.

At a concours renowned for coachbuilt European grandeur, the 2026 result also feels distinctly appropriate. The anniversary crown went to an American car that requires no imitation of European formality. It is direct, powerful and theatrical in its own language.

More than nine decades after it was built, the SSJ still appears almost confrontational in its ambition. Its Best of Show victory confirms that true automotive luxury is not merely opulence. At its most compelling, it is rarity joined to purpose, history sharpened by design and performance made unforgettable.

As gold confetti settled over the Duesenberg on the Pebble Beach ramp, the scene joined the car’s already substantial mythology. Gable gave it glamour, Duesenberg gave it formidable substance, and its latest custodians have returned it to the highest tier of concours competition.

The 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance could scarcely have selected a more fitting champion: an American masterpiece built at the edge of possibility, recognised at last on the collector world’s most exacting lawn.

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