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Chapter 2 The Most Talked About Car in the World Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
2 THE MOST TALKED ABOUT CAR IN THE WORLD
THAT'S WHAT the first brochure said on the cover: “The Most Talked About Automobile in the World Today.” And it wasn't exaggerating.
Many automobiles have been called “Sweethearts” by enthusiastic owners and hysterical copy writers, but no other automobile in history got as many mash notes as the Tucker. By automotive standards any car that has passed its fifth birthday is an old bat, with aging features that makeup can't renew. But ten years later the Tucker was still getting letters from affectionate owners, though some admitted a bit wistfully that they would like to see a new model.
It was truly a liebeswagen, and a Tucker on the street even today can still stop traffic and excite the admiration of kids who never heard of its maker. An owner in California wrote:
“We are constantly being followed home or stopped on the road to be plied with questions. Are they being built now? Where can one be ordered from? They think that ours is brand new.”
Some of the features, which almost overnight captured the world's imagination, may have been idealistic and at the time impractical, or would have needed years of research and development. But enough of those features were retained to satisfy the public, which had learned through long, sad experience that few sweethearts ever meet the promise of first infatuation.
The first story started the affaire. “Designed to cruise continuously at 100 miles per hour, the new 150 horsepower Tucker 'Torpedo' is powered by an airplane-type engine of entirely new design ... flat with opposed cylinders, largely aluminum, that can be taken out and replaced in 30 minutes,” the story said. No American stock car had yet reached that horsepower.
The name “Torpedo” was dropped after it was decided to emphasize safety rather than speed.
“It has a 126-inch wheelbase . . . the front tread is standard and the rear tread two inches wider for greater stability. Front fenders turn with the wheels, and driving lights on the fenders follow curves in the road. A single 'Cyclops Eye' fixed center light completes the headlight assembly, all to be controlled by a photoelectric cell that automatically dims the lights when meeting another car. Interior upholstery will be durable, fadeless, washable plastic or other synthetic fabric.” It would have a low center of gravity, road balance and independent wheel suspension that “will eliminate weaving at high speeds, and creeping on curves.”
Early press releases and literature followed the original story, featuring disc brakes, fuel injection and one item that was too much even for Tucker, who said he would have a torque converter design “that eliminates clutch, transmission, drive shaft and torque tube, differential and differential housing with an estimated saving in weight of 600 to 800 pounds.”
“The driver's seat is in the center, with the first real provision for seeing out since dashboards were given back to the carriage makers. But Tucker isn't going to be obstinate about it—if people insist on having the steering wheel at the left where they're used to it, he can move it back. Seats on either side of the driver swivel out of the way when the doors are opened. The windshield is a single piece of curved safety glass without obstructing corner posts or center upright. The doors will open into the roof so it won't be necessary to stoop getting in.”
“Tucker has an extensive background in the designing and building of racing cars,” another release stated, “and was associated with the late Harry Miller, whose cars won 14 out of 16 races at the Indianapolis Speedway.” Publicity men talked of “a price around $1,000.” However, that was a goal and those who knew prices and that costs of parts and labor were rising knew that the final price would be much higher than that. But such a price appealed to the imagination; it led to the belief that a reasonable price could be expected.
Tucker's aggressive announcements already were arousing fear in Detroit that he might become a threat to established manufacturers. After all, the right kind of salesmanship can sell almost anything and most people agreed that Tucker had that magic touch.
“Like his car, Preston Tucker is a bit on the spectacular side,” wrote one reporter, “a well built, well dressed man with a genial face and a gregarious personality.” One magazine called him a “personable, rather handsome 45-year-old Michigander with a gift for mile-a-minute talk and a flair for vivid bow ties and white socks.” Another description was “Boyish, bow-tied Tucker,” which persisted until in self-defense he gave away every bow tie he owned. The Tucker car was in comic strips; some sorority girls voted him “the man they'd most like to be marooned with on a desert island,” and the Tucker car became a standard gag on radio shows.
People could not account for it specifically, but Tucker represented a dream come true of a young American boy who had caught the popular imagination. Without knowing anything about the car itself, people could envisage an ideal car, designed by an ideal-looking young man, selling to the popular market.
Six feet tall and almost always well dressed, Tucker made an excellent appearance and he was equally at home speaking to a group from a platform, or in his office. He had a heavy frame but was never fat, and he never weighed more than 200 pounds. Men found him convincing, and most women thought he was handsome. Except for his ties, he dressed conservatively, and he invariably bought the best in clothes.
In spite of his reputation as a super-salesman, Tucker was not overly articulate. He felt keenly his lack of facility with words, and he often wrote or dictated endless pages trying to express himself outside the only subject he really knew—automobiles. While he finished high school and spent some lime at Cass Technical School in Detroit, he never went to college, and this very lack of formal education became an asset. He looked like a college man without being one, a fact that could be admired. He was a malapropist, but that often contributed to his wit, for his grammatical errors weren't a pose. When he said “exhilarate” for “accelerate” he may have been unconsciously expressing his feeling for automobiles better than if he had used the right word. His daughter Marilyn once said:
“I tried to get Daddy to say 'fiscal year' instead of talking about the 'physical year' as he always did. And he said, 'They know what I'm talking about,' and I had to admit he had a point."
Grammar was the least of his worries. His mind concentrated on other things. Once he began talking he showed an actor's instinct for catching the mood of his audience. After a few tries, we never wrote his speeches for him. Occasionally he would use notes, but most of the time he just talked off the cuff and when he lacked specific information he improvised, and effectively. If he sometimes manhandled the immediate facts, his purpose was to instill in his listeners the same enthusiasm and confidence that he felt himelf. Because Tucker never doubted that ultimately he would make the facts suit his own purposes.
There can be no question that Tucker was something of a visionary, or that he was asking for trouble when he proposed actually to do things that others in the field only talked about, or flatly condemned as impossible. Anybody who sticks his head above the crowd automatically invites somebody to knock it off. Quite likely the guy who invented the wheel had to dodge a lot of big rocks in his day, rocks thrown by people who believed that if wheels were practical the big tribes would already have them.
From early childhood Tucker had one interest in life, and one loyalty, that came ahead of family, friends and security. Loyalty to his conception of automotive design, along with an unshakable determination to build automobiles, was his one central item of integrity and he never lost it. Building an automobile that came as close as was humanly possible to his ideal was perhaps the one moral obligation Tucker recognized.
The romance between the public and the Tucker car was nothing more than extension of Tucker's own lifelong love affair with automobiles, which had started on a brilliant summer day in the country in Michigan when he was six years old.
Preston was visiting his grandfather that summer of 1909, but his mind was not on nature or matters agricultural. Unlike most kids, he never cared a hoot for country life.
He was out on the country road riding with his grandfather in a buggy behind a team of horses. It was a dusty, gravel road in northern Michigan. Suddenly they heard a car coming. Grandfather stopped the horses, jumped out of the buggy and grabbed the reins up close. This was standard, conventional practice in those days before horses had become accustomed to cars. He hollered to the boy to jump out too. “That fool with his gasoline buggy may scare the horses,” the old gentleman ex-plained. “We have to hold them so they won't run away.”
To Preston this was an unforgettable experience. He did not sympathize with the horses or feel sorry for the old man. His mind was hypnotized by the car he saw coming. It was sort of weaving along the rough road. About half a block away the car stopped and the driver motioned to Grandfather to lead the horses past.
When the animals smelled gasoline they shied and reared, but Grandfather got them past the car and tied them to a tree beside the road. Then he walked over to speak to the driver, who was a doctor from his town.
Preston's eyes could not leave the car. The gasoline smell that scared the horses and made his grandfather swear was perfume to him. Preston had seen pictures of automobiles but this was the first time he had actually seen one. It was almost Te a religious conversion. What the boy had seen was a vision, a symbolic sign of his own future, an experience he would never forget.
Almost in a daze, too excited to ask questions, Preston got hack into his grandfather's buggy and went down the road. He looked back at the shiny red automobile. It grew smaller, but he promised himself that he would own a car like that some day. Soon afterward he was examining designs and determining to build a car of his own that everyone else would admire.
This incident was the inspiration of Preston's early life. As he looked back it seemed to him the only experience he could remember. Much of the story of his early life was told to me by his mother, Mrs. Lucille Holmes, who remarried in 1928 after the death of her first husband in 1905.
Mrs. Holmes was never an easygoing person. Determined and self-reliant, she had experienced hardship and poverty, and she was a complete realist in appraising the world and its difficulties. When she talked of Preston she was at times surprisingly objective, not the usual doting mother to whom a favorite son could do no wrong. From the first meeting you knew she could not be changed or pushed around. She demanded respect and she expected obedience.
Unquestionably Preston inherited from her much of that determination that characterized him all his life. From that moment when, as a boy, he saw his first automobile he achieved a purpose in life and he never deviated from it. His ambition became fixed and it carried him through every obstacle, even to his last days.