Tucker 48

In short

• 50 cars completed in Chicago in 1947–1948, plus a 51st partly finished; English Wikipedia's lead counts 51 including the prototype.
• Rear-mounted Franklin O-335 flat-six of 5,475 cc, converted to water cooling, with 124 kW (166 bhp) and 504 Nm.
• Safety ideas: a central headlamp that turned with the steering, a padded dashboard, a crash chamber, a pop-out windscreen and a roll bar in the frame.
• Production stopped on 3 March 1949; the jury cleared Tucker on 22 January 1950.

Tucker 48 at a glance

Preston Tucker and the road to Chicago

Tucker spent the early 1930s in sales jobs in Memphis, Buffalo and Detroit and went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway every year. With Harry Miller he built ten modified Ford V8 racers for Henry Ford in 1935; they overheated and dropped out of the race. His Combat Car of late 1937 was rejected by the US military as too fast, though the Navy showed interest in its gun turret. Tucker Aviation Corporation was formed in 1940.

The car project began in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Production needed a plant, and Tucker found one in Chicago. The former Dodge Chicago Aircraft Engine Plant had built Wright R-3350 engines for the B-29 bomber, on a site of 475 acres (1.92 km²). He signed the lease in July 1946 on condition that he raise US$15 million by March 1947. A dispute with the Lustron Corporation kept him out of the building until September 1947.

Money: shares, dealers and accessories

Tucker floated a US$20 million share issue through the Chicago broker Floyd D. Cerf and had more than US$17 million in the bank by 1947. He also sold dealerships and distributorships across the country. The idea that later drew the investigators was the accessories programme. Buyers who paid in advance for accessories secured a place on the dealer waiting list, and the scheme had brought in about US$2,000,000 by the time of the 1949 investigation.

The car's price was another issue. Tucker first proposed a price of US$1,000; the actual selling price was closer to US$4,000. Negative press began in late 1947, and on 15 June 1948 Tucker published an "open letter to the automobile industry" in reply.

Design and safety features

The design team around Alex Tremulis and George S. Lawson drew a long, low four-door body. The first prototype was nicknamed the "Tin Goose", a name Tremulis claimed to have coined. The car was renamed Tucker '48 during development, reportedly so as not to remind the public of the war, but its first name is still widely used. The doors were cut into the roof to make getting in and out easier. The car's safety features were its main selling point:

• a central third headlamp that turned with the front wheels once the steering moved more than 10 degrees;
• a padded dashboard;
• a padded "crash chamber" ahead of the front passenger;
• a windscreen designed to pop out in a collision;
• a perimeter frame with an integrated roll bar.

Engine and gearbox

Tucker's own first engine was a 9.7-litre (589 cu in) flat-six with hemispherical combustion chambers, fuel injection and valves worked by oil pressure instead of a camshaft. It was meant to give about 149 kW (200 hp) and 610 Nm (450 lb-ft) at 1,800 rpm. Six were built, but in practice the engine made about 66 kW (88 hp) and needed a 24-volt system and up to 60 volts to start. Only the test chassis and the first prototype received one.

After almost a year lost on the 589, Tucker chose the Franklin O-335, an air-cooled flat-six of 5,475 cc built by Air Cooled Motors for the Bell 47 helicopter. He bought four samples and had the engine converted to water cooling, a choice English Wikipedia says has puzzled historians. He then bought Air Cooled Motors itself for US$1.8 million in the late 1940s. The production engine gives 124 kW (166 bhp) and 504 Nm (372 lb-ft), and it was run at full throttle for 150 hours in testing.

Gearboxes were the weak spot. As a stopgap, Tucker used the four-speed Cord 810/812 transmission with Bendix electro-vacuum shifting: 22 used units were bought and refurbished, and 18 went into cars. The Tucker Y-1 was a stronger redesign. The TuckerMatic was designed by Warren Rice, the creator of Buick's Dynaflow. It was a continuously variable unit with a single torque converter and 27 basic moving parts, about 90 fewer than a typical automatic of the time, and versions of it went into cars 1026 and 1042. Because it was long, the fuel tank moved from behind the rear seat to the front of the dashboard from car 1026 on.

With 124 kW for 1,900 kg, the car has about 65 kW per tonne, and the power-to-weight calculator compares that with other post-war cars. The car is 5,563 mm long and 2,007 mm wide; the size comparison tool sets such figures against a modern car.

Chassis, testing and the premiere

Instead of steel springs, the Tucker used rubber elements developed with Firestone. Cars 1001 and 1002 had a rubber torsion tube that toed in under hard braking. Cars 1003 to 1025 had a very stiff rubber "sandwich", and from car 1026 a modified torsion tube cured the problem. Disc brakes were on the original specification but were dropped for cost and time. The steering box sat behind the front axle to protect the driver in a frontal crash, and the steering columns came from the 1941 Lincoln. Seventeen states banned more than two headlamps, so Tucker supplied a cover for the central light.

The prototype premiered at the Chicago factory on 19 June 1947, in front of more than 3,000 people; the night before, two suspension arms had broken under its weight. During endurance tests at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, car 1027 rolled three times at 95 mph (153 km/h). The windscreen popped out as designed, the chief mechanic Eddie Offutt walked away with bruises, and after a tyre change the car was driven off the track.

The SEC case and the end of Tucker

The SEC and the US Attorney investigated the accessories programme and the share sale. Operations stopped on 3 March 1949. On 10 June 1949 Tucker and six other executives were indicted on 25 counts of mail fraud, five SEC violations and one count of conspiracy. The trial began on 4 October 1949 before Judge Walter J. LaBuy, the day the factory closed. On 22 January 1950, after 28 hours of deliberation, the jury found all defendants not guilty on every count.

Of 58 frames and bodies, 36 sedans were finished before the factory closed. Tucker's remaining staff completed 14 more, for 50 cars, and a 51st was partly built. The English Wikipedia article on Preston Tucker gives 37 cars built before the closure and 13 later, again 50 in all. In the early 1950s he worked with Brazilian investors and the designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky on a sports car called the Carioca, which was never completed.

Survivors and auction prices

English Wikipedia keeps a car-by-car list of the Tuckers. By that list, four cars (numbers 1018, 1023, 1027 and 1042) were destroyed and one (1035) has been modified; the part-built cars from 1051 upward are listed separately. Many survivors are in museums. Among them are The Henry Ford in Dearborn (car 1016), the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington (1039), the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles (1030). Others are at the AACA Museum in Hershey (1001, 1022 and 1026) and the Toyota Automobile Museum in Japan (1004). Car number 1049 was sold by RM Sotheby's in Monaco on 14 May 2016 for €1,344,000. In 1988 Francis Ford Coppola told the story in the film Tucker: The Man and His Dream; Coppola owns a Tucker and displays it at his winery. More cars of the decade are in the 1940s classics section.

Which Tucker 48 to look for

There is no real choice of versions: all completed cars are four-door sedans with the same engine. The differences are in the details:

• Gearbox: cars with the Cord-derived unit, the Y-1 or the TuckerMatic.
• History: the prototype "Tin Goose" and the 14 cars finished by the remaining staff after the factory closed have their own stories.
• Originality: car 1035 is listed as modified, so any car's number should be checked against the car-by-car list.

Photo gallery