Few names in motoring are as redolent of wealth and power as 'Duesenberg.' The company's advertising for its Model J said it all—soft charcoal drawings of a man in evening dress, seated in front of the fire in a great hall with a minstrels' gallery dominated by a huge pipe organ, or the silver-haired skipper of an America's Cup-type yacht, above a single line of script: "He drives a Duesenberg."

The company's catalog was more eloquent:
"The superlatively fine has no need to be boastful. Always there is devotion to an ideal with only one thought in mind; to produce the best, forgetful of cost or expediency or any other consideration. When this is finally accomplished, the work is acclaimed as a masterpiece by those who are in a position to know; it is recognized as a standard by which all other things of its kind are judged...this is true weather the creation be a Taj Mahal, a Grecian vase, Cellini's metal craft, a Rembrandt painting—or a Duesenberg car..."