Tucker — Preston Tucker's Short-Lived Chicago Car Company

Tucker at a glance

Preston Tucker before the car

Preston Tucker was born on a peppermint farm near Capac, Michigan, on 21 September 1903. As a teenager he bought and resold used cars, then worked as an office boy at Cadillac, on the Ford assembly line and as a car salesman in Memphis, Buffalo and Detroit. In 1935 he formed Miller and Tucker, Inc. with the race-engine builder Harry Miller; their first job was ten Ford V8 racing cars for Henry Ford, which failed in the race because their steering boxes overheated.

In late 1937 the former salesman conceived a fast armoured vehicle, the Tucker Combat Car. A version for the Dutch government ended with the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, and the US Army rejected the vehicle, though the Navy took an interest in its gun turret. The family moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, in 1939, where the workshop began turret production, and Tucker Aviation followed in 1940.

Designing the car

The car was conceived in Ypsilanti. Its creator hired the designer George S. Lawson in the summer of 1944, and Lawson became chief stylist in February 1946, when the company was formed. After Lawson resigned in December 1946, Alex Tremulis of Tammen & Denison in Chicago, who had been chief stylist of Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg in 1936–1937, developed the design. Tremulis also gave the first prototype its nickname, the "Tin Goose". Five designers from J. Gordon Lippincott then produced a clay model whose side profile was used for production. The name Tucker '48 was adopted around the time Lawson left.

The world premiere took place in Chicago on 19 June 1947 before more than 3,000 people. To finance the project the company raised US$17,000,000 in a stock issue, one of the first speculative public offerings, and an accessories programme brought in more money. The columnist Drew Pearson publicly called the car a fraud.

Engine, safety and engineering

The original engine, a 589 cu in flat-six, was loud and hard to start and produced only about 66 kW (88 hp) against the 112 kW (150 hp) Tucker had promised. The company therefore bought Air Cooled Motors, cancelled its aircraft contracts and used its Franklin O-335, a 5.475-litre flat-six rated at 124 kW (166 hp), which the engineers in Chicago converted to water cooling in 1947. That is about 23 kW per litre, a modest figure next to later engines in the output per litre data. In aircraft form the same engine powered helicopters such as the Bell 47, and the Tucker family owned the engine company until 1961.

Engine and gearbox sat on a subframe held by six bolts so that the drivetrain could be removed quickly. Early cars used modified Cord 810/812 four-speed gearboxes, later the Tucker Y-1; the Tuckermatic continuously variable transmission by Warren Rice was fitted only to cars 1026 and 1042.

The chassis had rubber torsion-tube independent suspension on all four wheels. A third, central headlamp turned with the steering at angles over 10 degrees, and in states whose laws limited headlamps it could be covered. Safety features included a perimeter frame, an integrated roll bar, a shatterproof windscreen designed to pop out in a collision, a padded dashboard and a "crash chamber" in front of the passenger seat.

The trial and the end of the company

The company's problems grew. The War Assets Administration rejected the company's bids for two steel mills, and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the accessories programme. Of the 58 frames and bodies built, 36 saloons were finished before the factory closed; a core crew then completed 14 more, for 50 in all, and a 51st was partly built. The company ceased operations on 3 March 1949.

Tucker and six colleagues were indicted in June 1949, and the trial began on 4 October 1949. On 22 January 1950 the jury found all of them not guilty, but the company never recovered. Tucker then worked with investors in Brazil and the designer Alexis de Sakhnoffsky on a sports car called the Carioca, which was never built. The Tucker name could not be used because another party had bought it. Preston Tucker died of pneumonia linked to lung cancer in Ypsilanti on 26 December 1956, aged 53.

The film and the surviving cars

In 1988 Francis Ford Coppola directed Tucker: The Man and His Dream, with Jeff Bridges as Preston Tucker and George Lucas as executive producer. Twenty-one cars were borrowed from members of the Tucker Automobile Club of America for filming, and Martin Landau won a Golden Globe for his supporting role. According to the film article, 47 of the 51 cars still exist.

The surviving cars now sell for seven-figure sums. Car number 1043 sold for US$2,915,000 at Barrett-Jackson on 21 January 2012, and number 1003 for US$2,035,000 at Pebble Beach in 2014. The Tucker 48 article covers the car's specifications, the make is listed in the Tucker catalogue, and other post-war American cars are in the classic cars section.

Tucker timeline

Landmark Tucker models

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