|
|---|
|
Chapter 6 Growing Pains Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
6 GROWING PAINS
WITH TUCKER'S long and varied experience in the automotive field and his proven sales record, his initial announcement of an entirely new automobile aroused the immediate interest of many veterans in the industry. While many believed some of Tucker's ideas were visionary or impractical, they saw enough features that could be used to make the idea of a new company entirely feasible.
The first organizational meeting was held in the Detroit Athletic Club and ended with an “oust Tucker” movement before there was even a corporation. The main trouble with this meeting seemed to be that early promoters in the deal wanted too big a slice for their efforts, failing to realize that a lot of high-power promotion would still have to be done to get it off the ground. It finally ended in a squabble over percentages and Tucker walked out. It was about the only time I ever saw Tucker act out of character. He stood up, said “Good day, gentlemen,” and walked out the door. He must have read the phrase in a book, or maybe heard it in a movie.
It was the end of the first scene in the Tucker drama, and probably the deciding factor in moving operations to Chicago a short time later. Tucker knew that the enmity of recent associates in Detroit, with their close ties in the industry, could be fatal if he tried to fight them on their own ground. When he finally moved the entire operation to Chicago, the only experienced automotive men still with him were Robert Pierce, Fred Rockelman and Ray Rausch. It was then that he formed the Tucker Corporation to make automobiles in 1946.
Pierce was a peppery little Scot with red hair, who came over from England in 1921 and, after working some years with Price, Waterhouse & Company, certified public accountants in Detroit, became controller of Briggs Manufacturing Company, world's largest independent body manufacturers. Pierce Was secretary-treasurer and a director when he left Briggs, and he didn't go with Tucker because he needed money. Pierce saw something in Tucker's plans that appealed to his lively but practical imagination—a chance to do something big and important in the automotive field, and to have the fun of lighting a time bomb under the conservative skeptics in Detroit, who already were deriding Tucker as a screwball whose whole idea was a joke.
Pierce helped break up that first meeting when he pulled out a checkbook and suggested that everybody ante $5,000 to get things started. Some of the people who were yelling the loudest about percentages couldn't match the $5,000.
Rockelman had a long and distinguished career with the Ford Motor Company, was vice president of the Ford-owned Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad, and later sales manager for the entire Ford organization. Portly and impressive in appearance, he had an open German face that radiated honesty, and a cultivated informality which put newcomers immediately at ease. He was a big man who, easily and informally, called important visitors by their first names shortly after they were introduced. And he was unquestionably a big man in the industry and around Detroit. He left Ford in 1930 to become president of Chrysler's Plymouth division, and during the war headed the Detroit office of Douglas Aircraft Company.
Rockelman later brought in Cliff Knoble as director of advertising, and Knoble came with Tucker after serving many years as advertising manager for Chrysler and later as account executive for Ruthrauff and Ryan, national advertising agency.
Ray Rausch was a director at Ford and later supervised manufacturing in all Ford divisions except the Willow Run plant. Shortly before the war ended, when all the companies held press conferences telling their plans for postwar production, Rausch easily stole the show for Ford with his calm announcement of what Ford would have and when. Spokesmen for most of the other companies hedged or answered questions with double talk, apparently lacking the authority or confidence that Rausch had.
Shortly after the first organization meeting Tucker moved his headquarters to the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, the one city outside Detroit which he believed was ideally located for manufacturing automobiles. Chicago had long wanted an automobile plant and several previous attempts had failed. Except for highly specialized manufacturing, Chicago in many ways was a better location than Detroit, with a strong machine tool industry, steel mills and foundries and a good labor pool left over from war production.
Transportation facilities were equally advantageous. Chicago was a major railroad center, had one of the busiest air terminals in the world, water transportation that even included seagoing vessels, and the Illinois Waterway which reached from Chicago to New Orleans and the Gulf.
Tucker already had a covetous eye on the huge Dodge plant in Cicero, not far from the municipal airport, which during the war built B-29 engines and was then the biggest white elephant on the hands of War Assets Administration. The WAA was pledged to lease or sell the plant wherever it would be of greatest public value. Covering 475 acres, the plant boasted a main building that was the largest in the world under one roof, and separate buildings included a power plant and foundries for iron, aluminum and magnesium.
During the early part of 1946 Tucker concentrated on building up his staff and trying to negotiate some kind of a deal to get the Dodge plant.
Rockelman became vice president and director of sales, and did a magnificent job of organizing the sales department. Pierce was a vice president and treasurer, later resigning but continuing to serve as consultant to Tucker. Pierce didn't need the money and didn't want the responsibilities of the job. Rausch started as vice president in charge of manufacturing, but resigned before arrangements were completed for the stock issue.
When, in an early brochure, Tucker presented his executive staff under the heading “From the Top Ranks of Industry,” he wasn't exaggerating. In addition to Pierce and Rockelman there was Hanson Ames Brown, vice president, who had been with Studebaker and Chrysler, had been assistant comptroller for General Motors in Detroit and was later vice president and director of all GM Canadian divisions. Ben G. Parsons, vice president in charge of engineering, was president and owner of the Fuelcharger Corporation in Detroit, specializing in fuel injection systems for aircraft and automobiles. Others were equally impressive, and for director of sales Tucker brought in Dulian, who had given him his first full-time job selling cars.
Another old friend who joined him in the new venture was Max Garavito, a Columbian who had his own export-import business in New York. Tucker first met him in the early 30's during one of his many trips to New York, and their acquaintance developed into a lifelong friendship. At the time Garavito was a lieutenant in the Columbian Air Force, during the war between Columbia and Peru, and was stationed in New York as an inspector of aircraft and armament purchases. Shortly after the sales department was started, Garavito organized the Tucker Export Corporation, using his own sales force and offices in New York.
During this period it became increasingly obvious that some kind of literature was needed beyond mimeographed handouts and the one brochure that had carried the operation this far, and which was already obsolete in view of design changes that had been agreed upon. In Washington one night a cab driver who didn't recognize Tucker talked all the way from the airport about the Tucker car, raising questions that Tucker would have spent all night answering if he had identified himself.
Contrary to popular belief, a brochure is not prima-facie evidence of intent to swindle somebody. When any kind of business reaches a certain stage there arises a multitude of questions that have to be answered, and a brochure, or pamphlet or folder of some kind, is the only practical solution. Without one, time must be wasted writing long repetitious letters of explanation. With any kind of adequate literature, it is only necessary to hand one brochure to a customer or enclose it with a letter.
Tucker had already commissioned a designer in Detroit to do an eighth scale clay model of the car, but the designer was making no visible progress in spite of repeated calls at his studio, and continued letters, telegrams and telephone calls. An eighth scale model is small, and if a designer knows what he is doing and works at it, he should be able to finish the job in two weeks. But this went on for months, and Tucker said he learned later that the man was only working occasional evenings and week-ends.
One night the designer called Tucker in Chicago and said photographs of the model were in the mail and should arrive any minute.
“You will gasp!” he said excitedly.
Everybody was assembled waiting for the pictures and when they finally came, special delivery, everybody gasped. A few, including Tucker, almost turned green.
The photographs, made showing the model against natural backgrounds, weren't too bad, but the design itself was sad. Above the doors it was somewhat similar to the Mercedes 300 SL, with window glass curving in at the top. But the radius of the curve made the top and windows together almost a half Circle, so that a full-grown man couldn't have sat anywhere in either seat except square in the middle.
But this model was all that was available until the project could be started all over again, and Tucker was stuck with it. And he needed the brochure. There wasn't time to wait for another model, considering that another designer might take just as long and come up with nothing better.
If there had been money enough to turn the whole job over to a good agency—copy, layout and art work—it would have been no great problem. But this was strictly a budget job. So three of us—E. D. Hill, a New York advertising man then working with Tucker, James E. Tripp, Chicago publicity man, and I—got a room in the Palmer House and turned out the complete copy and layout in a little over two days. A Chicago artist made some fast sketches and it was ready for the printer.
Nobody will ever know how Tucker kept scraping up money for constantly increasing expenses, but he did. During most of 1946 and the early part of 1947, Tucker's Ypsilanti company furnished most of the money to keep the deal rolling until funds were available from sale of franchises. Dan Leabu, who had started with Tucker as an inspector, was then plant manager at Ypsilanti, and he said their entire profits were sent to Chicago.
“We must have made more than $100,000 in less than two years, and we sent them every dollar we could spare,” Leabu said.
As the months went by it became more and more evident to Tucker that he couldn't get private financing without sacrificing control, which meant his only alternative was a stock issue. Without exception, the men or groups able to underwrite the deal demanded complete control; and Tucker, at this stage, wasn't ready to turn control over to a bunch of bankers.
But his luck held, as it had in the past when he needed particular men in his organization. He already had met Floyd D. Cerf, an investment banker on La Salle Street, who told him that he could handle a stock issue “as soon as you have a semblance of an automobile and a plant to build it in.”
It looked like a tough assignment, but Tucker never had the least doubt that he would make it. If anybody questioned his ability he could point to the men around him, and to the tremendous public response before he even had a model of the car.