Duesenberg Coupé Simone
Duesenberg Coupé Simone is a fictional
The Coupé Simone models became popular among collectors, despite bogus backstory. The relevant images and story were further disseminated in the internet.
Backstory
The elaborate pseudohistorical backstory of Coupé Simone was conceived by Franklin Mint design directors Roger Hardnock and Raffi Minasian.[2] According to it, two Franklin Mint designers were attending the mint's Antique Auto Show in 1995 when they were approached by a young man who said an elderly woman in his home town in Pennsylvania had an old car, parts, and tools in a barn.[2] The woman had kept it all for decades "in the hope that her husband, lost in the war, would return".[2] The two designers drove to the town to check. With permission from the elderly woman, they allegedly found drawings, letters and photographs in the barn, most yellowed and moisture-stained by age.[2] The documents depicted a custom-made Duesenberg car with flowing aerodynamic lines evoking the Art Deco design by Figoni et Falaschi. The documents, claiming to originate from 1937 and 1938, alleged that the Frenchman Gui de LaRouche commissioned a custom-made Duesenberg car to be made by Emmett-Armand Coachworks.[2] The purported coachworks owners, Emmett Hardnock and Armand Minasian, planned to show the car at the 1939 New York World's Fair which would last throughout World War II. Before the fair, de LaRouche demanded delivery of the car to France. Hardnock traveled by steamship to deliver the car and collect final payment, but before the ship docked, World War II had started.[2] The documents were forgeries made by Roger Hardnock and Raffi Minasian through artificial aging of paper.[2]
Minasian later recalled that the Coupé Simone model sold better than Franklin Mint's two previous real Duesenberg models.[2] This was despite the erudition of the Franklin Mint car collectors, as none of them had heard of Coupé Simone before.[1]