Dream Car Idea Gets a Retrial: Tucker 48 and Tucker Turbo V8

As 1944 dawned, the Allied powers were secretly reconnoitering the Normandy coast and preparing the most massive amphibious invasion ever mounted. The Axis, retreating in Russia and then Ukraine, kept its grip on Eastern Europe, where the curtain had yet to be raised upon unimagined inhumanities. Battles blazed across Italy and on Pacific islands, and on the high seas. Most Americans didn't know it yet, but the Machine Age was about to give way to the Jet Age, and in stunningly quick order, to the Atomic Age.  In the American Midwest, Preston Tucker was thinking about an automobile.

The sometime car salesman, regional sales manager (Pierce-Arrow) and machine shop owner from Ypsilanti, Michagan, had worked with the famed engineer Harry Miller on a series of Ford V8-powered Indianapolis racers from 1935 to 1939.  In summer 1944, Tucker hired George Lawson to come up with styling for a postwar production car.  Tucker's outline of features for the chassis included a rear-mounted water-cooled flat six, automatic transmission, disc brakes, centrally-mounted steering with all controls close to the wheel, a padded dash, and seat belts.  He also wanted front fenders and headlights that turned with the wheels, and a central headlight as well.  Lawson came up with numerous sketches that were used after the war in promoting the car to investors, but left at the end of 1946. Tucker then hired Alex Tremulis, who had worked for Auburn Cord Duesenberg before the war, to style a more practical sedan while a team of engineers worked on the chassis design.

Connections are sometimes drawn between Tucker's enterprise and the 21st century Tesla launch spearheaded by Elon Musk.  Both Tucker and Musk shared a talent for promotion, but diverge in their interest in, and mastery of, technical details, as well as in management of risk in financing their enterprises.  Tucker financed his purchase of a giant ex-Ford plant in Chicago by selling dealership franchises while engineers tried to come up with a functional prototype. Precious time was wasted on a giant 589 cubic inch engine with hydraulically-actuated valves and no camshaft.  This engine was abandoned when it failed to perform, and Tucker bought Air Cooled Motors, maker of the Franklin O-335 helicopter engine, which his team then converted to water cooling, requiring more expensive redesign and tooling. This decision may have been prompted by noise control concerns; however it should be noted that a successful air-cooled V8 powered luxury sedan had been produced by Tatra* in Czechoslovakia in 1934, and its cars had resumed production after the war. Plans for an automatic transmission were put on hold while the pre-selector 4-speed (3 + overdrive) transmission from the prewar front-drive Cord 810 was adapted for production. The resourceful and cash-strapped Tucker engineering crew reconditioned some used Cord gearboxes for use in nearly two dozen pre-production cars, then worked on an improved version of this unit.

The rendering of the styling scheme by Alex Tremulis shown above pretty accurately predicts the shape and details of the production car, except for the painted lower bumper and grilles at front, and the conventional door hinges at rear which appeared on the "Tin Goose" prototype. The production car shown below went with fully chromed bumpers, which added unnecessarily to the visual heft of the front end, and with suicide rear doors, which saved money on tooling, as a single, symmetrical C-pillar served for both sides. Along the way from visionary's dream to production car, the Tucker 48 lost its central steering, disc brakes, and fuel injection, but retained a safety glass windshield and padded dash, a steering box located behind the axle for safety, and an engine mounted on a subframe which could be easily removed for service. Doors extended into the roof for easy entry and exit.  And the car featured a central headlight that followed the steered wheels at angles over 10 degrees to illuminate corners.

Carburetors replaced fuel injection on the reconfigured Franklin flat six, but the engine still made 166 horsepower and 372 lb.-ft. of torque.  Zero to 60 mph. came up in 10 seconds, and top speed was 120 mph.  So the Tucker was about as fast as the pioneering Jaguar XK-120, a car that would appear across the Atlantic in the fall of 1948, but would only carry 2 passengers.  In order to get enough engines produced for his car project after purchasing Air-Cooled Motors, Tucker abandoned numerous military contracts. One wonders about how the car project might have evolved if Tucker had kept those military contracts to keep cash flowing in, and instead of redesigning the engine, used it in a high performance car more like the XK-120, a car which soon found an avid market in the America. In France during this period, race driver J. P. Wimille* had developed a mid-engined, 3-seater GT car, also with central steering, but gave up his idea of building his own advanced V6 engine by adopting readily available Citroen fours and French Ford V8s.  Tucker could have saved time as well as production cost by giving up his dream of a new engine, and concentrating on the physics and dynamics of chassis design with a smaller, lighter car, as Wimille had...

Tucker's dream car was derailed by accusations of stock manipulation and a trial after charges were brought by the SEC, possibly with the connivance of a Senator with connections to Detroit's Big Three. Tucker was acquitted of all charges, but the trial effectively ended any hope of getting his Model 48 into real production. Only 51 examples of Tucker's dream car (including the prototype "Tin Goose") ever left his Chicago factory.  Just under 4 dozen survivors are confirmed today by the Tucker Automobile Club. The Tucker story, however, of a visionary optimist taking on the politically-connected moguls of Detroit, has had staying power.  Four decades after the Tucker saga unfolded on the front pages of the newspapers (television was still in its infancy), Francis Ford Coppola released "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" which was generally well-received by critics but, like its namesake automobile, failed to recoup its production costs. If nothing else, it heightened collector interest in the surviving Model 48s, two of which were owned by the director.  Another two Tucker 48s were owned by producer George Lucas; he finally sold one in 2005 for nearly $400,000. More recently, restored Tucker 48s have been auctioned for over $2 million. As sometimes happens when supply is in two digits but value ascends to seven digits, collectors began commissioning replicas. Some of these were for collectors disappointed in their search for originals, and others were projects conceived using the Tucker's distinctive shape as a takeoff point for something substantially new.  One of the latter is the car built by master hot rod artisan Rob Ida in New Jersey...

His team was able to create CAD drawings from measurements of a surviving Tucker 48, and to fabricate a steel floor pan, bumpers and trim pieces as well as steel-framed door openings, and to form other body components of carbon fiber.  On the interior, they echoed the original early postwar materials, including bakelite.

A twin-turbocharged 4-cam Cadillac Northstar V8 with 4-speed automatic transmission is mounted transversely in front of the rear axle, offering around 380 more horses than the original flat six, and more user-friendly weight distribution.  Ida Concepts moved the engine and suspension from the front of a mid-Nineties front-drive Cadillac Seville, and  modified the engine's internals as well as the suspension to cope with the increased power.  Finally, a Tucker 48 received the degree of careful study the original engine choice, and chassis dynamics, had lacked...

This might be the view you'd get of the twin-turbocharged, mid-engined Tucker replica as it passes you, especially if you're sitting in one of the anonymous, ubiquitous SUVs that have taken over our highways. The Tucker saga is a reminder that the history of the American automobile is full of stories that might have ended differently, if only someone had taken a different turn at some decisive fork in the road...

*Footnote:  Tatra automobiles are pictured in "Cars & Ethics: A Word or Two on VW" , in these post archives for 11-27-15, and in "Roadside Attraction: Rolling Sculpture at North Carolina Museum of Art", from 12-31-16.  The futuristic prototypes built by J.P. Wimille are depicted in "Three for the Road: Jean Pierre Wimille Forecast a GP Car for Everyman", posted 7-9-16.

Photo Credits:
Top (brochure rendering):  George Lawson for Tucker Corporation, on wikimedia
Color rendering: Tucker Corporation, on flickr.com

Monochrome rendering: Alex Tremulis for Tucker Corporation 
All photographs:  the author