Jay Leno is no stranger to rare and significant vehicles. He not only owns well over 100 automobiles of all eras, but he also features cars outside of his collection. In a recent video, the famed comedian and auto enthusiast outlines his 1920 Duesenberg-Rochester Revere Four-Passenger, a significant model that was found and restored. A particularly notable feature is its “walking beam” engine, and Leno, being the car aficionado that he is, goes into detail why this engine is so significant.
The ReVere-Duesenberg Was The Pinnacle Of Performance
The 1920 Revere-Duesenberg mashup is as classically-correct as it can get. The car is a barn find, which Jay located and acquired back in 2005. Since then, every inch of the car has been revised and brought back to its former glory. As Leno points out, the Duesenberg-powered Revere was a big step up from the Ford Model T, mainly because of the difference in power - 22 horsepower for the Model T versus over 100 for the Revere.
The Precursor To The Overhead Valve Engine
The Revere’s amazing (for the 1920s) performance comes from what is known as a “walking beam” engine. Before the Duesenberg brothers started making their own cars, they manufactured racing engines, and pretty good ones at that. The “walking beam” design was, essentially, a cheaper, simpler alternative to the overhead-valve engine.
The engine, itself, was a 5.5-liter, inline-four with a 5.2:1 compression ratio. It was known to be extremely reliable, and apparently a very good racing engine, securing many wins for the Duesenberg brothers and later other privateers who bought the engine and put it in “assembled cars”. The Revere was certainly not the only party that bought Duesenberg’s “walking beam” engine, so in a sense, it was the 1920s equivalent of a Chevy crate engine.
The Revere brand, itself, has an interesting story behind it, including the death of its founder, who wasn’t exactly known for being the most ethical of businessmen. Given the age and rarity of these cars, and the fact that Leno is probably one of the very few people to possess one of these in the world, his detailed video on the Duesenberg-powered Revere “horseless carriage” is about as educational as it gets on the subject.