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

  When Preston was sixteen, he convinced his mother to let him use his savings to buy a car. He found an Overland touring car for sale and negotiated the seller down to $300. He drove it for a year and a half and then sold it for the same amount he’d paid, using the money to buy a Ford Model T. There was something mechanically wrong with the Ford, so his mother told him to sell it rather than endure the headaches of maintenance and repair costs. Tucker found a buyer at $350. The profit inspired him. He sought another car deal and located someone selling a Chandler for $750. Tucker offered the $350 he had made from the Model T sale and struck a deal.

  The Chandler had a defective transmission, and Tucker was reluctant to pay someone else to fix it. He tore the transmission apart himself and laid the parts out on the floor of the family’s garage. To remember where the parts went, he numbered them as he took them out, writing the numbers on the floor by each part with chalk. Despite his system, Tucker could not get the transmission to run properly. He relented and paid a mechanic to rebuild it. Sixty-four dollars later, he sold the Chandler for $610, a tidy profit. After all, Tucker was still in high school, attending classes at Detroit’s Cass Technical and working odd jobs in the evenings and on weekends.

  After Tucker left high school, his family moved to the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park. Preston found a job riding motorcycles for a living with the Lincoln Park Police Department. Only nineteen, he lied about his age and became a police officer, patrolling a stretch of town near the Detroit River, trying to enforce Prohibition. Canada, where bootleggers acquired alcohol to smuggle into the United States, was just across the river. It was 1922, and the outlaws had discovered the lucrative nature of the import business, which meant Tucker would not be able to spend as much of his working time as he hoped simply cruising around on a motorcycle. His mother did not like the danger of his work, and she told his supervisor that he was underage. As a result, the police force ousted him for the time being.9

  Tucker had met Vera Fuqua when he was eighteen, and the two had begun dating. They married in 1923. By this time, while Vera worked for the phone company in Detroit, Tucker had returned to the auto industry and was now working on Ford’s assembly line. He didn’t enjoy standing at a machine all day and asked for a different job, but he didn’t like his new job either. He left Ford and ran a gas station for a short time.10 When he turned twenty-one in 1924, he rejoined the police department; now that he was old enough, his mother couldn’t stop him.

  Tucker enjoyed police work and collared a bank robber and an auto thief along with some alcohol smugglers. But his creativity and knowledge of cars soon got him in trouble with the department. His squad car had no heater, and Tucker thought he could remedy that easily enough. He drove to the public works department and borrowed an acetylene torch, which he used to cut a hole through the car’s firewall, which separates passengers from the engine compartment. This would allow engine compartment heat to keep him warm while on patrol. It was a crude alteration, and word soon got around that Tucker had butchered a city-owned police car without permission. He was moved to foot patrol and saw the handwriting on the wall.11

  In 1924 Preston and Vera welcomed their first child, Shirley—named after Tucker’s father—followed by Preston Jr. in 1925. The couple would go on to have three more children over the next five years—Marilyn, Noble, and John.

  Around 1925 Tucker became good friends with Mitchell Dulian, the owner of a Studebaker dealership in Hamtramck, a Detroit suburb with a booming immigrant population.12 Dulian hired Tucker as a salesman, and Tucker took to selling cars in ways that Dulian, a veteran, had never seen. Tucker would take a “parade” of cars through town and set up near a street corner, where he would pitch the cars to people on the streets as if he were an “old time medicine man.”13 He paid commissions to local shopkeepers and businessmen for sending him prospects. Dulian’s was soon the top-selling Studebaker outlet in the Detroit area.

  Tucker quickly became disillusioned with working in Hamtramck, though, because the commute from Lincoln Park took away too much of his family time. In 1926 he returned to the police force one last time.14

  Dulian, meanwhile, moved to Memphis, where he owned two dealerships. He asked Tucker to come down and manage one of them. This Tucker could not resist. As soon as he got the telegram offering the job, he sent back a telegram accepting it. According to one biographer, he left in such a hurry that he didn’t have time to resign from the Lincoln Park PD. Instead, they termed it a leave of absence. Arguably, Tucker was a member of the Lincoln Park PD until the day he died,15 but he actually left on March 18, 1927.

  After a few years in Memphis selling Studebakers and Chryslers, Tucker and his family moved back to Lincoln Park. Tucker repeated this pattern several times—spending time outside Michigan for a year or two and then returning to the Detroit area.

  In 1931 Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company offered Tucker a job as a zone manager. He and his family moved to Buffalo, New York.16 Shortly thereafter, Preston got a job at a Packard dealership in Indianapolis, and the family moved to the home of the Indy 500.17 He attended races there, as well as the several weeks of practice and qualifying that preceded them. In the garages at the track, Tucker talked to car owners and builders, including Harry Miller, whom he had first met on a visit to the city in 1925. The two remained in contact even after Tucker moved back to the Detroit area.18

  After returning to Michigan in 1933, Tucker tried one of the few ventures in his life that was not car-related: he ran for mayor of Lincoln Park.19 He announced his candidacy in January, running against two well-known candidates, Mark Goodell and Arthur Zirkalosa. He distributed flyers outlining his populist stance. In them, after describing how politicians had not been doing enough to solve recent financial problems, he stated:

  I have no paid-for campaign workers, nor paid-for propagandists, and made no promises, nor do I intend to, and if you people see fit to place me in office, you may feel sure that your future Mayor will deal fairly with all of you.

  My qualifications are these: Beginning as an automobile mechanic, I continued in this field until I reached the position of general sales manager of a nationally known manufacturer, my work including the actual budgeting and financial lay-outs of various sizes of businesses. My earlier record as a policeman in Lincoln Park is one of action and loyalty.20

  Despite his impressive record and the campaign’s homespun appeal, he came in third in the primary that March. The winner, Zirkalosa, had 1,729 votes, Goodell 516, and Tucker 275.21

  But most of Tucker’s endeavors stayed closer to his area of expertise. At one point, he helped the Mundus Brewing Company of Detroit with their fleet of beer delivery trucks, designing the truck bodies as well as an automated loading and unloading system for the kegs.22 And he continued his association with engineer Harry Miller—a partnership that would pave the way for his automotive odyssey to follow.

  Harry Miller

  Preston Tucker could not have risen so high in the auto industry had he not made a name for himself by working with engineering genius Harry Arminius Miller.

  Miller was born in Wisconsin and dropped out of school at thirteen to work in a machine shop.1 In 1895, at the age of twenty, he moved to Los Angeles, where he made racing parts for bicycles. After marrying in California, he returned home to Wisconsin to work in a foundry, where he tinkered with car engines, motorcycles, and even boat motors.2 There he designed and built a four-cylinder engine that impressed his coworker Ole Evinrude, the man whose name would become synonymous with outboard boat motors. But Miller quickly moved on, relocating to San Francisco to work on motorcycles and developing and patenting a spark plug, which he sold to fund more of his projects. One writer has called this a demonstration of Miller’s “characteristic inability to concentrate on any one project at a time.”3 Indeed, restlessness defined Miller’s career. He spent half his time working for others and half tinkering and inventing.

  By 1906 he was in Michigan working for the Olds Moto
r Works in Lansing as a mechanic. The following year he invented a carburetor with two-stage jets. At idle and low speeds, one set fed fuel to the engine. At higher speeds, the second set opened so both sets fed the engine. The carburetor worked well and seemed ideal for a race engine. In 1911 he went to the Indianapolis speedway and pitched his carburetor to race teams there, who after seeing how well it worked, jumped at buying them. The Miller Master carburetor dominated the race for the next decade.4

  After World War I, increasing speeds at the races concerned the Indianapolis 500 organizers. Crashes often resulted in serious injury or death. Could the cars be slowed down and still present an entertaining race? Organizers introduced new rules limiting engine size to a displacement of 3 liters—or roughly 183 cubic inches. To Miller it was an engineering challenge: he set out to build the most powerful 183-cubic-inch engine possible. Two drivers funded Miller as he built an eight-cylinder racing engine that would meet the new threshold.5 By 1922 Miller’s refined engine dominated the race. That year, the Miller 183 won at Indianapolis and nine other major races.

  The new engine-size rule did not slow the cars. They still managed speeds that worried race organizers. The 1922 race winner averaged a speed of 94.5 mph. The organizers tried to slow the cars more, reducing engine displacement by another third. The following year engines could be no larger than 2 liters, or 122 cubic inches.

  Miller designed a high-performance 122-inch engine, and because of his reputation with the Miller 183, racers placed orders with him for the 1923 season. Again Miller’s engine outperformed many of its larger predecessors. A Miller 122–powered car won the 1923 Indy 500, along with eight other races. And, contrary to race organizers’ plans, average speeds had again increased despite the engine downsizing. Winning race speeds that year exceeded 100 mph.6 Drivers started asking Miller if he would also build cars to go with his engines, and Miller obliged.

  Again in 1926, race officials sought to slow the cars down and mandated that engines in the race cars on that circuit could displace no more than 1.5 liters, or 91.5 cubic inches. And again, Miller designed a smaller, more powerful engine. His engines were so dominant that most drivers used them. Besides Indy-style racing, the engines powered other record-setting events. One driver ran a lap in Atlantic City at over 147 mph. Another set a straight-line record at Daytona Beach, covering a mile at over 180 mph.7 Between 1922 and 1929, Miller engines won 79 percent of major US races, and in the 1929 Indy 500, Miller engines powered twenty-seven of the thirty-three starting positions.8

  Unfortunately, Miller’s reputation as a genius engine and car builder was offset by his inability to make money from his work. While his engines dominated the tracks and made drivers famous, Miller toiled away, often flirting with bankruptcy.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, Preston Tucker was spending more and more time at Indianapolis each year, particularly in the pits and garages, where he studied the cars and got to know the car builders. He met Harry Miller in 19259 and told him he could help him turn his business profitable. Tucker had no shortage of the salesmanship skills Miller lacked. Miller agreed to work with Tucker.

  By 1931 news reports were referring to Miller and “his manager, Preston Tucker.” But it was Miller’s latest innovation for making race cars run faster that garnered the headlines: MILLER BUILDS FOR SPEEDWAY: PLANS FOUR-WHEEL DRIVE RACER TO APPEAR AT INDIANAPOLIS. Most race cars had always been two-wheel drive, but Miller had made front-wheel-drive racers previously, and he believed he could gain an advantage by putting power to all four wheels at Indianapolis. The story noted that Miller, along with “manager” Tucker, had designed the racer in Detroit, and that their car would be “the first of its kind Indianapolis has ever seen.” One senses that Tucker influenced the reporter: without quoting Tucker or Miller, the story said their car would have a sixteen-cylinder engine.10 In reality, the car hit the track with a four-cylinder engine.

  In the following years Miller and Tucker were involved in a partnership off the track as well. Marmon, a car company located in Indianapolis, had been building cars since 1902 but had fallen on hard times. In 1933, at the height of the Depression, the company entered receivership. A variety of plans were floated to save the company, including an effort in 1934 to bring aboard Harry Miller and Preston Tucker. The announcement touted Miller’s expertise in engine design and building and Tucker’s salesmanship. The new company would resume making Marmon autos and also aviation and marine engines. It might even build race cars designed by Miller.11 But despite organizers’ high hopes, the deal fell apart and Marmon stopped making automobiles. Its founder, Walter Marmon, focused his attention on building four-wheel-drive vehicles under the name Marmon-Herrington—without the help of Miller or Tucker.

  By 1935, the two men had formed their own company, Miller-Tucker. Inspired by the fact that Studebaker had sponsored five cars in the previous two Indianapolis 500s, Tucker wondered whether he could convince a car company to underwrite race cars built by Miller-Tucker.12 Tucker pitched the idea to Henry Ford, and he agreed to try it. Ford would sponsor a contingent of ten Miller-Tucker cars that they would build using engines and parts furnished by Ford. Ford would invest $25,000 in the project. Tucker and Miller would keep any prize money won, and their company would retain the cars’ ownership afterward. All Ford would gain from the relationship would be bragging rights.13

  And if the project failed, Ford recognized, all he would earn was bad publicity. To manage that potential downside, he decided not to negotiate a contract directly with Miller-Tucker. Instead, Ford engaged N. W. Ayer & Son, one of America’s most prestigious advertising agencies, to draft a two-page contract. Ayer would control how the cars were presented, from what advertising they might carry to what the press would be told about them.14 Presumably, they would act on behalf of Ford and do their utmost to protect the Ford image.

  Tucker oversold Ford on how soon the cars could be built. The contract was sent to Miller and Tucker on January 28, 1935. The race was scheduled for May 30, 1935.15 The team would need to work nonstop, especially because Miller wanted to make something special: front-wheel-drive, all-independent-suspension racers. They would be the first of their kind at Indy. And he needed to build ten of them in time to test and qualify them for the race.16

  As agreed, Ford provided the money and parts to Miller-Tucker, which frantically worked to get the cars built in time. It quickly became clear that the budget of $25,000 was insufficient. Among other things, Ford had not given Miller-Tucker enough parts to assemble complete cars—Ford only donated engines, differential gear assemblies, gauges, and brakes.17 Tucker asked Ford for more money, and Ford tripled his investment to $75,000.18

  While Miller built the cars, Tucker recruited drivers, getting commitments from some of the biggest names in racing. And the initial publicity proved a bonanza for Ford. Newspapers covering the practice and qualifying runs at the speedway featured photos and headlines about the Ford entries. HENRY FORD HAS ENTERED TEN OF THESE IN BIG RACE, read an Associated Press photo caption beneath a photo of the Miller-Tucker car. The description claimed they were “85 per cent stock cars,”19 presumably so Ford could get car buyers to equate the success of the racers with the quality of Ford’s consumer cars.

  Unfortunately, the task of building ten cars on such short notice, even for Harry Miller, proved too difficult. Peter DePaolo had won the race in 1925 and agreed to drive one of the cars. He took it for a test run and the steering didn’t seem right to him. He asked Miller about it. “You just drive it,” Miller is said to have snapped back, impatiently trying to solve too many problems at once.20 DePaolo quit the team instead.21

  At first, Miller’s problems readying the cars for the race were kept quiet. Reporters continued pushing the story about Miller and Ford returning race cars to the time when they were more stock and less exotic. One columnist said Miller had done an “about face” with the project, but also denied that Henry Ford was behind it. He wrote, “The project was financed by
a group of dealers whose identity has not been revealed. Miller is the front man for them.”22 Perhaps Henry Ford was going to wait for the results of the race before actively promoting his connection to the venture. The columnist also noted that only five of the cars had drivers but did not doubt that all ten would race. The cars impressed all who saw them, even those unaware of the cutting-edge setups inside the cars. One authority said the Miller-Tucker creations were “the best looking, best streamlined cars ever seen at the speedway.”23

  Ultimately, only five cars were ready for qualifying and only four of them qualified. On the plus side, the cars were more than fast enough; they hit speeds of 130 mph in practice, and the fastest qualifiers entered the field at 120 mph.24

  Ford still hoped for a publicity bonanza. The pace car for the race that year was even a Ford convertible.25 But on race day the Miller-Tucker cars did not fare well. One dropped out early, leaking fluid. The rest all suffered identical steering gear failures.26 Miller later diagnosed the problem: a portion of the steering mechanism was mounted too near the exhaust manifold and overheated, causing the gear to fail.27 The longest-lasting of the cars made it to lap 144 out of 200, good for only sixteenth place. Miller must have had mixed feelings watching his latest creations fail, since all of the top twelve finishers of the race that day used Miller engines.28

  Henry Ford was upset by the embarrassing show. Worse, Miller-Tucker sent a bill to Ford for the $117,000 that it had expended developing the cars, even though Ford had only agreed to pay $75,000 toward the project. The parties squabbled, and eventually Ford settled with Miller and Tucker by agreeing to pay them if he could keep the cars. He wanted to make sure the cars did not tarnish his company’s name any further.29 Rumor had it that Henry Ford ordered the cars destroyed, but for some reason they survived. A few even returned to the track in later years, no longer affiliated with Ford, proving that they were competitive once the bugs had been worked out of them. At least two of the cars made the field for the 500-mile race as late as 1947.30