With Madness in Its Rear View, a Triumphant Duesenberg Heads to Hershey A further chapter in the sputtering, 80-year-old saga known as Madness at Muroc, a tale of dry-lake racing, high-stakes gambling, million-dollar cars and Hollywood hot-rodders, is about to be written. Madness at Muroc references a duel in 1932 between a 1928 Mercedes-Benz S 26/180 Boattail Speedster and a 1931 Duesenberg Model J Phaeton, run at Muroc Dry Lake in Southern California, for a purse that by current conversions would equate to roughly $425,000. The Mercedes, missing for decades and recently discovered, was sold at auction in 2010 for $3.74 million. The Duesenberg has subsequently come forward, having been consigned for auction on Friday at Hershey, Pa., as part of a week of collector car activities planned there. RM Auctions has placed a presale estimate of $1.2 million to $1.5 million on the car. Even though the dual-windshield, barrel-sided Duesenberg was just one of seven of that type built, the preauction estimate of a car of such rarity was "consistent with current values," according to Amy Christie, a spokeswoman for RM. Zeppo and Chico Marx, of the Marx Brothers comedy act, had to pool their resources to buy the cream-color, Murphy-bodied Mercedes-Benz S. It probably cost a bit less than the Duesenberg, but it was nearly as rare and revered by sportsmen; Model S cars had been raced with unparalleled success in Europe by Rudolf Caracciola. The brothers challenged Phil Berg, a Hollywood agent who owned the Duesenberg, to a winner-take-all match race for $25,000, essentially the value of each car. This was during the Great Depression, and the prize money represented a staggering sum. Busloads of news crews and Hollywood glitterati came to the high desert for the big race. Griffith Borgeson, the motorsports historian, described the event as "sort of an automotive gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a showdown between two of the biggest, baddest glamour wagons of all time." Berg had hired a ringer to drive his Duesenberg: Eddie Miller, a veteran of the Indianapolis 500. The heavy, LeBaron-bodied phaeton was stripped to racing trim, losing fenders, bumpers, running boards, headlights, top, trunk, windshield and any other extraneous equipment. Miller also tuned the 8-cylinder, 265-horsepower engine to racing specifications. The Marx team hired Joe Reindl, a Mercedes specialist based in Hollywood, to drive for them. The brothers also ordered the car's fenders and other equipment removed. At 6:30 a.m., on the day of the race, the two cars lined up on a circular track at Muroc, a portion of which is now on Edwards Air Force Base. At the green flag, the Mercedes sprinted into the early lead. But Miller built up speed gradually and passed Reindl in minutes. It might be tempting to say Miller never looked back, but he did. "As I came by the pole, where the people were waving and cheering, I looked back but could see no sign of my competition, swallowed up somewhere in my dust cloud," he told interviews afterward. Miller estimated he was traveling at 108 miles per hour, "really pouring on the coals." "We had the muffler off, of course, and you can believe that that thing roared," he added. They must have heard it in Barstow. Despite great expectations, it was not a great race. The Mercedes slowed with mechanical trouble, and the Duesenberg cruised to an easy payday. Both cars, seemingly little more than playthings of the rich, were unloaded by their owners not long after the race. Though the Mercedes dropped out of sight for many years, the whereabouts of the winning Duesenberg were closely tracked. RM's researchers found an article published in Sports Illustrated in 1971 noting that Tiny Gould, its owner at the time, rejected an offer of more than $45,000, which at that time would have been a record price paid for an antique car. It eventually passed to its current owner, Ray Bowersox of Milford, Pa., in 1985. Under his care the car was restored and all its parts reinstalled. The Mercedes, meanwhile, was sold in its Muroc racing form, although the seller provided the original fenders separately. Painted a sand beige, with red paint on the fenders, cloth top and side curtains finished in tan and its interior appointed in a lived-in brown leather, the J belies its raucous past as a desert racecar. A specialist for RM who wished to remain unidentified, noting the company's policy to not speak publicly of a car not owned by a customer, learned that the Mercedes, ironically, had passed to an owner who lived near Hershey. Match race, anyone?