Believers say you should never reveal a wish, but don’t try selling that superstition to Doug Pray of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Co. Just 24 hours after telling his wife he hoped to find a “barn find” Duesenberg, his wish came true.
“The night before I got the phone call that it was for sale, my wife asked what I wanted to do in retirement,” Pray recalled. “I said, ‘I want to do the fun stuff: the buying and selling, the making deals.’ She asked, ‘What’s the best deal you can find?’
“‘There has got to be another barn find Duesenberg Model J for sale in the United States,’” he replied, then immediately recanted. “‘Nah, it can’t happen.’ And it was the very next day it happened. You just don’t get a phone call for a Murphy-bodied Duesenberg [barn find], and there will probably never be another one. I am very blessed that I got the phone call.”
If there’s anyone who could possibly get an out-of-left-field phone call offering a million-dollar Duesenberg hidden from public view for 55 years, it’s Doug Pray. Some might say such a call was long overdue. Pray’s family has operated the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Co. in Broken Arrow, Okla., since 1960 — one year before this Duesenberg Murphy convertible coupe discovery was last publicly shown. It was Pray’s father, Glenn, who purchased the company, along with its remaining inventory, from Dallas Winslow, who had bought it in 1938
