Like all great pieces of art, the Marmon Sixteen was one man’s vision of perfection.

Automobile pioneer Colonel Howard Marmon created a triumph of pattern-making and foundry technology, containing at its heart an all-aluminum V-16 engine on a state-of-the-art chassis.

With 200 hp from over 490 cu.

in., the car was capable of out-accelerating a Duesenberg Model J—yet it cost only one-third as much, making it as much of a performance bargain as a $5,000 automobile could be.

The Sixteen was dressed by Walter Dorwin Teague Jr., an MIT student working for his father’s industrial design firm, whose crisp lines devoid of gratuitous ornamentation and characterized by crisp design shapes embodied the lean sportiness of the age.

This was a design in which superb styling and world-class engineering existed with harmonious balance as has seldom been seen before or since.

Like a fine Swiss watch or the best mahogany speedboat, it whispered quietly but firmly of its owner’s wealth and exquisit...