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Chapter 5 Into the Big Time Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
5 INTO THE BIG TIME
WHILE HE WAS in an Indianapolis hospital in 1937, recovering from an appendicitis operation, Tucker got the idea of making a high-speed combat car. Newspapers were filled with rumors of war and Tucker was reading Tolstoy's “War and Peace.” He believed war was on the way, and now was the time to go ahead with his idea.
So after three lush years in Indianapolis he moved to Ypsilanti—about thirty miles west of Detroit—and bought a big house on a double lot. At the back of the lot was a large barn which he remodeled into a two-story building, adding sections as the new operation expanded. He set up a machine shop on the first floor, offices along one side and put engineering and drafting rooms on the second floor.
Behind the building next to the alley were dynamometers for testing engines. The bases are still there, along with 440-volt electric lines and four-inch water mains. He called his new operation, which was formed in 1940, the Tucker Aviation Corporation. This was the first Tucker corporation.
The combat car was spectacular, reaching a speed of 117 miles an hour, and it mounted a power-operated gun turret designed by Tucker and his engineers. Army officials said they didn't have any use for that kind of speed, but they were tremendously impressed by the gun turret. Mrs. Tucker still has a small model which he took with him on trips to Washington for conferences with government officials.
“Preston always carried that model in a pillow case,” Mrs. Tucker said, “and when I went along I took a supply of clean ones. None of our children ever got the attention that Preston gave that precious model of his.”
His persistence paid off and he got contracts for building the turrets. When operations outgrew the shop in Ypsilanti they took over one of the Graham-Paige plants on Warren Avenue in Detroit, and when that still couldn't handle the business, the job was sub-contracted to other companies. But here Tucker's luck failed him for the first time. The war started and the government confiscated his patents and royalty rights. Years later he was still suing other companies for royalties on turrets they had manufactured under his patents.
One of the engineers working for him at Ypsilanti was Jimmy Sakuyama. A graduate of Iowa and Wisconsin universities, Jimmy had worked with Miller and Fred Deusenberg and with the Chevrolet brothers. Tucker said that in 1929 he designed a four-in-line air-cooled light plane engine that passed government tests the first time it was run. Tucker met Sakuyama at Indianapolis.
Jimmy could have been the original prototype for the traditional Japanese of comedy. Short, with coarse black hair, he wore glasses with thick lenses, and his voice was a disconcertingly loud, monotonous singsong. When he talked he smiled, whether there was anything to smile about or not, and his bland expression gave not the slightest hint of what he might be thinking about. A sort of “Mr. Moto” at the drafting board, he was a genius in his way and Tucker recognized it.
When the war started and they began rounding up enemy aliens, Jimmy became desperate. He said he came from a noble family in Japan, that he had disgraced his family and he would never go back. He said he would kill himself first. Tucker told him not to worry, went to Washington, and had Jimmy paroled to him. So Jimmy lived in a trailer behind the plant, where he raised some chickens and one duck, which went under the trailer to sleep at night.
While he was a good engineer and an expert draftsman, Timmy's weakness was the bottle, and he went on periodic bouts that usually ended in the hospital. It finally developed into a routine. Jimmy could tell when he had reached the hospital stage. He would dress over his pajamas, go to the hospital and lie down and wait for a doctor to come and check him over.
The hospital found him something of a problem, because as soon as he began to feel better he would dress and go downtown and buy boxes of candy, come back and go to bed and give the candy to the nurses. One day he went back to his trailer and killed and dressed a chicken, which he brought back to the hospital, asking the nurse to have it fixed for his dinner.
At the shop they were working two shifts part of the time, and sometimes they worked all night. Most of the technicians lived in Tucker's big house, where Mrs. Tucker had her table full three times a day. She said there was one time when the big stator ring on which the turret turned had to be ready the next day, and all the men were too tired to work on it.
“Preston told them to go to bed, that he would do it himself. The men didn't think he could. Right after dinner he and I went out to the shop and he started the lathe. It was a special setup and he had me turning it on and off while he checked it with a micrometer.
“I was getting nervous because we had a lot of money tied up in that ring and we couldn't afford to buy another one. It was some kind of special alloy and we had to wait a long time for delivery. So I kept telling him, 'Be careful, you're taking off too much.'
“Finally he got disgusted and told me to go in and go to bed. He worked out there by himself all night, and by morning he had it finished.”
The men may have been surprised but Tucker wasn't, because the setup was his idea in the first place. The first job was only a development contract so they couldn't afford special equipment, but Tucker improvised a weird combination of an old belt-driven lathe and a horizontal milling machine.
Mrs. Tucker believes at least a million dollars worth of engineering was done in that barn, and there are still Detex watch clock stations on the outside of the house and the barn, where a watchman checked in every hour.
During one of his trips to Washington, Tucker met Andrew J. Higgins, the New Orleans ship tycoon who was building torpedo boats and had contracts for 200 of the famous Liberty ships, using the same assembly line methods Kaiser was using on the West Coast.
Higgins and Tucker decided they had a lot of common interests, and in a meeting later in New Orleans they made a deal. The conference started at 6 o'clock in the afternoon, and Tucker said ten minutes later they wrote and signed a contract in longhand, which was made official after the lawyers worked it over. The deal was announced by Higgins on March 21, 1942.
It wasn't in the book that two men as highly individual as Higgins and Tucker could get along, but the deal looked like a natural at the start. Higgins, short with red hair and blue eyes, was like a little dictator, whom many believed would be the Henry Kaiser of the South. Slightly paunchy, he was an impressive bon vivant in white suits and panama hats and fitted perfectly into life in New Orleans, for he loved fine food and was a lavish entertainer. Tucker people said he was overbearing, and he was happiest with a lot of big projects all going at once. In his small world Higgins was a big operator and, like Tucker, a colorful personality who was always good for headlines.
Under their agreement Tucker became a vice president of Higgins Industries and would set up a separate plant for the new Higgins-Tucker Aviation division to mass produce gun turrets and engines for Higgins' boats.
Tucker's turrets were mounted on some of Higgins fast torpedo boats, and spectacular demonstrations were staged on Lake Ponchartrain for the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps officials and representatives of the British Navy. Using balloons for targets, the boats sped around the lake shooting them down like clay pigeons.
Tucker took all his people from Ypsilanti and Detroit, about seventy families, and started operations in a plant on Scott Street in New Orleans. Jimmy was there in his trailer, across from the plant in a parking lot. Also there was Art Chevrolet, who went with Tucker after the racing team broke up. A frequent visitor was Eugene (Gene) W. Haustein, former race driver who was working with an armament company. Haustein, who later went with Tucker in Chicago as test driver and all-around trouble shooter, drove in four Speedway races, finishing fifth in 1935 in a Miller Special, the same car Louis Meyer won with in 1933. Tucker moved his family, which now included five children, into a big old house on Gentilly Boulevard.
“Preston worked the hardest I've ever seen a man work,” said his wife. “He was nervous, and he got so thin he walked as if he were crippled. The doctor finally told him to get clear away from the plant on week-ends and take it easy. We used to leave early Friday afternoon and go to the Edgewater Hotel in Gulfport. Preston would lie around and sleep most of the time, and we'd go back Sunday night.”
One Sunday night they got back late and the whole crowd was in shorts, swimming suits and barefooted. When they started into the house they saw a big barrel. Tucker's youngest daughter, Marilyn, then fifteen, took off the lid and screamed. It was full of crabs.
The watchman said they were a present from Higgins, and when nobody knew what to do he explained how to cook them. It was too late to buy anything, but they picked some bay leaves in the back yard and found some lemons and peppers in the house. They got a big kettle and put it on the gas stove, lighting all three burners.
About this time the barrel tipped over and big crabs began squirming all over the floor. People jumped on the counter, climbed on tables and chairs while the crabs took over. Someone went to the garage and found some laths which they broke in two and used like chopsticks, picking up the crabs and dropping them into the kettle. All the time Marilyn was standing on a chair screaming:
“No, not alive!”
It took the rest of the night to get them all cooked, but they had crabs for breakfast and said they were terrific.
Tucker and Higgins worked together about a year, building and testing various boats and landing craft. But they were too much alike to get along. Both were impatient of detail, and both were lavish with money. Higgins was fighting with the government over some canceled contracts, and Tucker was fighting with Higgins. The deal finally blew up and Tucker went back to Ypsilanti. Higgins sued for $118,000, but the suit was dropped.
In Ypsilanti, Tucker rented a large metal building about a block from the house, set up a machine shop and went back to producing war materials, and the watchman had one more station to check on his rounds. In every spare moment Tucker was now working on plans for a new automobile. He thought the end of the war would be an ideal time to bring out a completely new car, because the entire industry, in the beginning at least, would be stuck with pre-war models.
Jimmy started working on the big opposed engine Tucker wanted, and Tucker took suspensions and other parts from racing cars to study, and determine how to adapt them for a fast, powerful passenger car. He hired an artist, Josephine Chatham, to sketch up his ideas, and her illustrations were used in the Pic story.
A new man joined the staff at Ypsilanti—Dan Leabu, an engineering graduate from the University of Michigan who had worked twelve years with Ford in tool design and electrical experimental projects. Later in Chicago he was active in final design of the Tucker automobile. Leabu at first sight wast a man who stood out. He wasn't talkative and hesitated to offer suggestions, in conferences or even conversations. Rather like a big bear, he was never obtrusive, but when some crisis came up and something needed to be done fast, it would very likely be Leabu who did it. He could operate any machine in the shop but, more important, he could handle the men who were hired to operate them, whether there were four or four hundred. Completely loyal to Tucker, he would take on any assignment without the least hesitation, from getting some part made fast to meeting with some millionaire on financing when Tucker was tied up. Leabu was more than an employee or associate of Tucker—he was also a friend.
By 1944 the business was going strong, but the end of the war was in sight and the shop was filled with orders that might be canceled any time. Tucker already had formed a loose organization to help promote his new automobile, and was negotiating with several companies to get it built.
It was at this stage that I went to Ypsilanti, met Tucker for the first time, and later wrote the story that got his venture off the ground. This was in December of 1945, and Tucker immediately started recruiting experienced automobile men to strengthen his small group. Many he had known intimately for years, and others became interested after the story of his new automobile made the newspapers and magazines.
Earlier, while talking with people in Chicago, trying to get a deal put together, Tucker had met Abraham (Abe) Karatz, who said he believed he could find a broker who would handle a stock issue. Karatz also said he understood Chrysler's Chicago Dodge plant was to be declared surplus, and that it would be ideal for building automobiles.
In Ypsilanti I first met Karatz, and I was immediately impressed with his intensity, his supreme confidence and his tremendous knowledge of people and places. Heavy but not fat, he had a quick smile and a deep penetrating voice that seemed to override doubts and problems by sheer volume. In time, after we became friends and he was “Abe,” I learned his most serious weakness: his ambitions were always far ahead of his capabilities, and his thinking could have affected the entire Tucker operation. Always he was shooting for the one big deal that would run into millions, and I have repeatedly seen him pass up small deals in which he could pick up a few thousand because he wanted to pyramid them into a multi-million dollar promotion. In Tucker, he saw a man who could front the deals he could only dream about.
Next to promotions, which were Abe's life, he loved to eat, and he seemed to be equipped with some kind of radar to find the finest eating places in any city. It was occasionally embarrassing. If he happened to be low on money at the time he might borrow twenty dollars or so, and then he would take you out to dinner and insist that you eat more, maybe at five dollars a plate, on your own money. Yet as far as I know he was completely honest, and in his work for Tucker and the corporation he was tireless, with endless patience, and completely loyal.
There was one flaw in Karatz record, which to us seemed small and unimportant: he had served time in Joliet for what the state charged was some kind of insurance fraud. He made no secret of it and Tucker considered it unimportant, though later Tucker's enemies seized on it as a weapon against him, charging that Tucker was a crook from the start because he was associated with Karatz.
Tucker meanwhile had developed into an impromptu public speaker who ranked with the best. He had none of the tricks of professional orators yet he was convincing, seemingly because his personality came through in spite of his ineptness with language. In his use of common words, and his frequent errors in grammar, he was sometimes compared with the late Huey Long, who won the solid support of the Louisiana bayou Pershes with his backwoods mannerisms. Yet these was a difference: observers said Long cultivated his mannerisms for effect, but Tucker's were natural. It was Tucker himself talking using the only language he knew.
So far, Tucker's speaking had been confined to small groups in his home, or office or hotel suite. But soon his audiences would be larger, because the deal was almost ready to roll. He was now ready for big deals and he saw himself as the center of the whole operation. He was beginning to taste power and enjoy it, realizing it was the only path to a success he was determined to achieve.