Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Steve Lehto

  Foreword copyright © 2016 by Jay Leno

  All rights reserved

  Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN 978-1-61374-956-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lehto, Steve, author.

  Title: Preston Tucker and his battle to build the car of tomorrow / Steve

  Lehto; foreword by Jay Leno.

  Description: Chicago, Illinois: Chicago Review Press, [2016] | Includes

  bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016009223| ISBN 9781613749531 (hardback) | ISBN

  9781613749562 (epub edition) | ISBN 9781613749555 (kindle edition)

  Subjects: LCSH: Tucker, Preston, 1903–1956. | Tucker automobile—History. |

  Experimental automobiles—United States—History—20th century. |

  Automobile industry and trade—United States—History—20th century. |

  BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business. | HISTORY / United States /

  20th Century. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Industries / Automobile Industry.

  Classification: LCC HD9710.U54 T854 2016 | DDC 338.7/629222092—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016009223

  Typesetting: Nord Compo

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  In honor of Preston Tucker

  and every other person who has dared

  to launch a business in America

  A man with a dream can’t stop trying to realize that dream any more than an artist can stop painting, or a composer composing. Other men failed before me. Henry Ford failed twice. Willys failed twice. Today their names are known in every corner of the globe. It’s no disgrace to fail against tough odds if you don’t admit you’re beaten. And if you don’t give up.

  —Preston Tucker, 1952

  Contents

  FOREWORD BY JAY LENO

  1. AN EARLY MORNING CAR CRASH

  2. PRESTON THOMAS TUCKER

  3. HARRY MILLER

  4. THE TUCKER COMBAT CAR

  5. ANDREW HIGGINS

  6. TUCKER’S AUTOMOBILE PLANS

  7. THE PIC ARTICLE

  8. THE TUCKER CORPORATION

  9. TUCKER ACQUIRES A PLANT

  10. BEFORE THE STOCK OFFERING

  11. THE TIN GOOSE

  12. GETTING READY

  13. THE TIN GOOSE UNVEILED

  14. THE STOCK OFFERING

  15. POST–TIN GOOSE

  16. GEARING UP FOR PRODUCTION

  17. THE FIRST CAR OFF THE ASSEMBLY LINE—#1001

  18. THE ACCESSORIES PROGRAM

  19. THE END OF THE DREAM

  20. BANKRUPTCY

  21. THE SEC REPORT

  22. THE GRAND JURY

  23. COLLIER’S AND READER’S DIGEST

  24. THE TRIAL

  25. THE CIVIL SUITS

  26. PRESTON TUCKER SPEAKS OUT

  27. JOSEPH TURNBULL TESTIFIES AGAIN

  28. THE LAST DAYS OF PRESTON TUCKER

  29. THE MOVIE

  30. AFTER

  31. THE TUCKER LEGACY

  32. THE FLEET OF TUCKER ’48 SEDANS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  Foreword BY JAY LENO

  Many cars are known by their creators: Ford, Porsche, Ferrari. But no other carmaker has overshadowed his own creation like Preston Tucker. And that is probably what led to his downfall, and that of his company.

  Tucker was a big deal in 1947, and the fact that people today know his name is a testament to that. They even did a movie about him, starring Jeff Bridges. Tucker made headlines by announcing that he was going to launch a new car at a time when America really needed one. In the years after World War II, there was a car shortage, and the big American car companies planned to fill the market with warmed-over designs from before the war.

  And along came Tucker. He promised to build not just any car, but a car that would be revolutionary and futuristic. It would be aerodynamic, rear-engine, and rear-wheel drive. It would have a lot of revolutionary new safety features, like a pop-out windshield and a safety cell a passenger could dive into in the event of a crash. It would have a headlight on each front fender and a cyclops light in the middle that moved with the steering wheel. It would also have something Tucker called a hydraulic drive that would power the rear wheels using fluid instead of gears—but that never got past the experimental stage. And it would be affordable. It was exactly what America wanted to hear, and soon letters were flooding in from across the country from people wanting to know where they could buy one of these cars. The problem was that the car didn’t exist yet.

  Tucker knew a lot about cars. He’d been a car salesman his whole life, and he loved cars. What’s interesting is that his idea wasn’t completely revolutionary—the car he envisioned was a lot like the Czechoslovakian Tatra T87. That car had an engine in the rear and a trunk in the front and was quite groundbreaking before the war. In fact, when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, many high-ranking German officials commandeered them as staff cars because of how fast they were. The trouble was they were deceptively fast. The combination of the cars’ sleek aerodynamics, engine in the rear, and swing axle made them tricky to drive, especially in turns. As a result the Germans, who were not familiar with the cars’ handling characteristics, crashed many of the cars.

  A story went around during the war that within the first week following the Nazi invasion, seven German officers had died driving Tatras. A popular joke told of how the Tatra had killed more Germans than the Czechoslovakian army. Afterward, Hitler was said to have banned the use of the Tatra by his officers or Nazi officials. This could explain why so few of them ended up in Germany after the war.

  So, many of Tucker’s ideas were workable. But the trouble with Tucker was that he was a better car salesman than he was an engineer. Although he had some great ideas, he didn’t have the business acumen to put them in place. He ended up being chased by the federal government, who said he committed fraud. He used customer deposit money in such a way that it looked like he was building a car today with money from a buyer who was promised a car tomorrow, and so on. To some, it looked like a Ponzi scheme. If that was what he was doing, technically it would have been fraud. Some even tried arguing that Tucker never intended to build any cars, but later facts would show that to be untrue. Tucker wound up being acquitted after a lengthy trial. But by then the damage was done and his company was gone.

  Tucker did get the last laugh. He built fifty-one cars. And most of those are still around and are highly valued. They routinely sell at auction in the millions. A few years ago, rumors that someone had found a previously unknown Tucker convertible caused a frenzy in the car collecting community until it was disproven. That shows the intensity of the interest in these cars.

  Preston Tucker’s legacy is that of the ultimate underdog, the everyman whose optimism would allow him to triumph against great odds. He almost made it, but in the end . . . well, Tucker’s company did not survive. But so many of the Tucker cars did. And that certainly stands for something.

  An Early Morning Car Crash

  September 24, 1948.

  Eddie Offutt had been driving all night at 90 mph. It felt slow to him as the stands flashed by his car. Here, on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he normally d
rove much faster.1 Even so, the rough brick surface of the two-and-a-half-mile oval chewed the car’s tires. Offutt sailed around the oval with the pedal almost to the floor, watching the miles add up on the odometer of his “waltz blue” Tucker.

  Offutt was in charge of a team testing the revolutionary Tucker ’48 sedan, then the hottest thing in the automotive world. More than 150,000 people had written letters to the car’s manufacturer asking how they could buy one. So many people paid admission to see one displayed in New York City that the venue outgrossed some Broadway plays running nearby.

  The car’s namesake, Preston Tucker, had unveiled the car to the world on June 19, 1947. Tucker, a brilliant salesman and showman, was promising a newer, safer, and more reliable car than those the auto giants in Detroit churned out. His rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive automobile featured better traction and more passenger space than its competitors, along with disc brakes and an automatic transmission, long before those became standard in the industry. Its padded dash and sturdy frame would better protect passengers in a collision, and the car would drive more smoothly and cost less than other vehicles on the market. The established car companies had stopped assembling new automobiles in 1942, spending the last few years building tanks and airplanes for America’s forces in World War II. Now, as peacetime production resumed, these companies were struggling to bring fresh new models to the market. Tucker’s bold alternative was raising a stir.

  Eddie Offutt lapped the track at 90 mph, worrying little about business problems as he noted how smoothly Tucker #1027 ran. Offutt, Preston Tucker’s lead mechanic, had met his employer at Indianapolis years before, when Tucker had worked with famed race car builder Harry Miller. Now Tucker had sent his team to Indy with a fleet of seven Tucker ’48s to test the cars’ endurance and resolve last-minute bugs. The cars weren’t in mass production yet, but Tucker had assembled enough to display them around the country and build consumer interest.

  As daylight began to break at Indianapolis, Offutt’s drive took a dramatic turn. Just as he entered a curve at high speed, the sedan’s engine stalled. In a fraction of a second, the rear of the car swung out from behind him. As he fought to regain control, the right rear tire blew out. The vehicle’s tires, with a new tubeless design by Goodrich, had seen nothing but heavy driving in the previous days as the team had clocked a thousand miles at high speed, virtually nonstop around the speedway, often without even slowing for corners.

  Offutt lost control. He skidded onto the grass of the infield and the car turned sideways. Then it flipped. The driver held on as it tumbled over and over again, three times in all. The windshield popped out. Finally, the car landed on its wheels.2

  Offutt climbed out and surveyed the damage. He had bruised an elbow but suffered no other injuries.3 Other than the missing windshield, some minor body damage, and the tire that had blown out as he lost control, Offutt saw nothing wrong with the car.

  Later, Offutt and the others would realize the accident was the result of a simple mistake made in the early morning darkness. At 4:15 AM, Offutt had stopped to refuel the car. A mechanic had reached for the wrong container in the dark and placed aviation fuel in the vehicle, which the Tucker engine was not tuned to run on.4 For now, Offutt replaced the tire and drove the vehicle off the track.

  The Tucker team was conducting the Indianapolis tests in strict secrecy. The Tucker ’48 had been subjected to oddball rumors and gossip, like a persistent story that the car could not drive in reverse. No matter how many times they demonstrated the cars backing up, the story dogged Tucker’s men. Tucker could not afford leaked test results, especially if something went wrong.

  Fortunately, the tests were a spectacular success. The team logged thousands of miles in the Tucker ’48s and found only a few minor problems, all easily resolved. And Offutt’s crash was not caused by the failure of a Tucker part. If anything, the crash underscored Tucker’s assertions about his car’s safety: it had rolled three times after crashing at 90 mph, and the driver had walked away with nothing but scrapes and bruises. The team drove the caravan of Tucker ’48s back to Chicago, satisfied with their results. Only the damaged Offutt car had to be trailered home—because it was missing its windshield.

  But not all was well at the Tucker Corporation in Chicago. Even though the American public clamored to buy the cars, and Tucker had raised $20 million from enthusiastic investors, powerful forces in Washington were gunning for him. The Securities and Exchange Commission had announced that it was investigating Tucker, suspecting him of bilking investors with a massive fraud scheme. The latest headlines about Tucker accused him of perpetrating a hoax, suggesting that his cars weren’t real and his factory was a sham.

  But everyone who saw the Tucker ’48 sedan believed Tucker had built an amazing car. The vehicle was revolutionary, and Tucker had built it despite vocal critics who said it was impossible. Tucker had not resolved one problem though: the cars were taking too long to get to market. Could Tucker save his business?

  Offutt would witness just how serious the disconnect was between the reality and the government’s suspicions in early 1949, when he was summoned to appear before a grand jury and grilled about the Tucker ’48s. The US attorney not only believed the cars were fake but thought Offutt knew it too. Offutt told the attorney about the successful tests at Indianapolis. The attorney then asked him, “How were the cars taken to Indianapolis—trucked down or driven down?”

  Offutt said the cars had been driven to Indianapolis from Chicago.

  “Are you sure you drove them down?” the attorney pressed, giving Offutt the chance to change his story in case he was lying.

  Offutt stuck to his answer, which was the truth. The cars had not been “trucked” down; they had all been driven to Indianapolis under their own power. Offutt offered to let the attorney and the jurors visit the Tucker plant and see the cars. The offer had been made before, many times.

  Again they declined the offer.

  And so the stage was set for a trial that would ruin an innocent man, Preston Tucker, and doom the corporation building the spectacular Tucker ’48 automobile.

  Preston Thomas Tucker

  People who met Preston Tucker described him as an extraordinary salesman. Six feet tall, he exuded a confidence that could make you believe whatever he was pitching at the moment. He was always well dressed in public, usually in a suit with a fancy necktie. But his most striking characteristic was his ability to speak easily with anyone, to put his listener at ease. His powers of persuasion worked on journalists too: several interviewed Tucker and wrote about him in such glowing terms it was apparent they had fallen under his spell.

  He did not come across as slick. He spoke in a folksy style, sometimes misusing words, much to the dismay of his close friends and family members. Speaking of a car with its gas pedal depressed, he might say that the car “exhilarated,” or when talking finance to board members, he would reference the recent “physical year.” His daughter tried more than once to help him with his vocabulary; he told her not to bother. “They know what I’m talking about.”1

  Those who knew him best said there was much more to the salesman than an unpretentious charm. To Cliff Knoble, an advertising man who worked closely with Tucker, “he possessed a warmth and humanness that made men eager to help him.” He was loyal to those he knew and determined to follow through on the ideas he believed in. This, perhaps, was his biggest flaw. People who worked with Tucker in his most important years said that he sometimes discarded advice from experts and deferred instead to friends. Knoble referred to it as a “naiveté” that left him “susceptible to the blandishments of an occasional highly skilled parasite.”2

  Family members saw Preston not as a salesman, of course. To them he was trusting, taking people at face value. His granddaughter says he was not suspicious of anyone. Loving and warm to those around him, he was often even goofy, especially with children. His home was overrun with his own and those of other family members. And he would speak t
o anyone, always as an equal.3

  As many have attested, Preston Tucker had a magnetic personality. People were drawn to him.

  * * *

  Preston Thomas Tucker was born in Capac, Michigan, a small farming community about thirty miles west of Port Huron, roughly sixty miles north of Detroit, on September 21, 1903. His father, Shirley Harvey Tucker, was a railroad engineer, and his mother’s maiden name was Lucille Caroline Preston. Shortly after Preston’s birth, the young family moved in with Lucille’s parents, Milford A. Preston and Harriet L. Preston, in Evart, Michigan. Lucille gave birth to another boy, William, in 1905. Preston’s father died of appendicitis on February 3, 1907, when Preston was three.4 To make ends meet, Lucille taught at the local one-room schoolhouse in a community known as Cat Creek, just west of Evart.

  When he was in the fourth grade, Preston befriended a boy a year older, Fay Leach. In later years, Leach would watch Tucker’s name appear in the news and remember the time the two had spent in the nearby farm fields. While Leach and the others were doing their chores, Tucker would be talking and asking questions of the older kids. Often, the conversation turned to what fascinated Tucker the most: “these new machines—the automobile.”5

  In 1914 Lucille decided to move to Detroit to look for work. She briefly worked in an office and then returned to teaching. Money was tight; by 1920 the family had six lodgers living with them.6

  Cars continued to fascinate Preston, and as a teenager he spent much of his time frequenting local service stations and used car lots, talking to the workers and examining the cars. He even landed a job in the auto industry as an “office boy” at Cadillac in 1916.7 His stint there was short but legendary. He worked for D. McCall White, an executive at the company, who had Tucker running around quite a bit. The teenager decided he could do his job more efficiently if he were on roller skates, so he began skating around the offices at Cadillac. One day Tucker rounded a corner at the office with an armful of papers and slammed into his boss. Tucker’s time as an office boy came to an end shortly thereafter, but there must not have been any hard feelings; White would end up working for Tucker a few decades later.8