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Chapter 15 World Premiere Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
15 WORLD PREMIERE
ALTHOUGH THE STOP ORDER was still in effect and there was no indication when the stock could be sold, if at all, the World Premiere went off June 19 with no perceptible dampening of enthusiasm.
Invitations had been sent to 651 dealers and distributors to bring prospective dealers and guests, and replies indicated about 1,100 would attend. Special guests added another 1,200, plus 500 investment bankers invited by Cerf. With another 150 representatives from newpapers, magazines and radio stations, attendance was estimated at 3,000, which was the seating capacity of the factory assembly room where the show was set up.
Long before 9 clock in the morning, parking lots in front had filled up. By noon extra police were called to handle traffic on Cicero Avenue in front of the plant, and they estimated more than 5,000 persons came to see the show. There were more than 1,000 out-of-state cars and fifteen special buses.
Travers was an old hand at putting on shows and this was one of his best efforts. One of the prettiest girls in the plant presided at the reception desk, and costumed page girls took the guests to regional registration desks where they received badges and programs. As soon as people registered they were lined up for tours through the plant. Motorized trains with open-seat cars ran continuously until noon.
Lunch was served cafeteria style in the main cafeteria and two dining rooms, and there was no dallying over coffee because the multitudes had to eat in shifts. By 3 o'clock everybody had been fed and ushers herded the mob into the assembly room. Ceiling-high blue and silver drapes covered one stage with a turntable, and another smaller stage near the wall.
After a fanfare from the band, Rockelman called the meeting to order and the band started the National Anthem. Four Marine color bearers in summer uniforms marched down the aisles and stood at attention after raising the colors on the stage. After the invocation by a Chicago minister, Rockelman introduced special guests and made a short talk, explaining to dealers that they were in a “virtual partnership proposition, because dealers' and distributors money, together with investments by Tucker and his associates, had made early financing of the corporation possible.
“We are all in this together and we are here today not only to see the car itself, but to learn of the progress that the corporation has made,” Rockelman said.
Next speaker was Tucker, who outlined the background and history of the corporation, including the first altercation with SEC over franchise sales, the fight with the Housing Administration and the current battle to get the stop order lifted so sale of stock could be started. Other officials followed Tucker at the microphone, droning on and on until the crowd began to get restless. They had come to see the car, not listen to a lot of guff about what great guys all the Tucker officials were.
If some people in the audience thought things seemed a bit disorganized, they should have seen the madhouse back-stage, where tired mechanics who had worked all night were still laboring to get the car ready in time for the afternoon show.
The Tin Goose was a hurry-up job and Tucker, like Henry Kaiser, had insisted on certain features which later had to be abandoned. One of these was a 24-volt electrical system. The industry vindicated Tucker's judgment, that more powerful batteries were needed to operate all the gadgets, when it went to 12 volts within the next few years. But that didn't help any at the time, because the only standard equipment avail-able, such as generators and starters, was 6-volt except for a few trucks which used 12-volt batteries.
The production department was dickering with various suppliers to furnish 24-volt batteries and equipment, so engineers solved the immediate problem by putting 24-volt airplane engine starters on the two engines, in the display car and the chassis. The big six-cylinder 5 by 5 engine needed plenty of push to turn it over, and the airplane starters had only a five-to-one power ratio compared to the standard 20-to-one on automobiles.
To start the cars for testing they used portable batteries on an electric truck, with a small battery in the car for ignition. But for the show the car had to start without outside help, so they put in two 12-volt truck batteries weighing 167 pounds each. The handmade body was already heavy with several hundred pounds of solder or more, and adding another 300 pounds of batteries was the last unbearable straw, putting too much extra weight on the rear end.
The first suspension arms were cast aluminum and too light for the job. During testing the arms held up all right and it wasn't until the morning of the show, after the two heavy truck batteries had been installed in the rear, that the arms collapsed.
Mechanics and test drivers rushing to get the car ready for the Premiere had enough on their minds without worrying about the suspensions, which had been passed by the engineering department. First problem was that the direct fuel injection system didn't work right. Solving this was simple: they just disconnected the system and installed twin carburetors on the intake manifolds.
The second and more serious trouble was the valve actuating mechanism. The design was theoretically practical, using an activating pump that worked like a distributor, with oil lines to the valves, which were operated by hydraulic pressure instead of the standard push rods. But when the engine picked up speed and increased the oil pressure, air got in the oil lines and the timing went crazy. There being no quick remedy for this, they had to drive the car the way it was.
The first suspension arm broke about 10:30 in the morning with Ralph Hepburn, Western zone manager, driving. The arm was the right rear, and if it had broken five minutes earlier it probably would have killed two mechanics working on the valve actuating mechanism. One of the mechanics was Dan Leabu, who had come to Chicago from Tucker's Ypsilanti plant.
“Charley Desmet and I were under the engine just before it broke,” Leabu said. “It must have been about the third time that day we had bled the lines trying to get the valve timing back where it belonged. It was just luck we weren't underneath because we would have been squashed flat.” The arm was replaced and mechanics continued checking other parts. They were dirty and tired, but there would be no sleep until the car had been driven from the stage into a roped-off area in the assembly room.
About 1 o'clock in the afternoon both rear suspension arms broke with the car just standing still, and then a front arm snapped. The men who had worked in the pits at Indianapolis didn't need to hold a conference when that happened. They rushed to the machine shop where four new arms of tough beryllium copper were machined from solid stock. One by one they were installed, while speakers in the assembly room kept talking to hold the audience until the car was ready.
It was almost 4:30 in the afternoon when the car was pushed up on the platform behind the drapes, and Tucker went backstage to receive the applause and congratulations of grinning, greasy mechanics. “Let's go,” they told him. “What the hell are we waiting for?” Waiting models touched up their makeup and took their positions. The real show was about to begin.
Four models in strapless evening gowns stepped out from behind the curtains and sounded a fanfare on long gold trum-pets, and at a signal from Tucker other models stepped up and drew back the drapes.
There stood the car in full side view under a battery of spot-lights, its rich maroon finish gleaming against the white shoulders of the models who towered above it. Only sixty inches high, it was the lowest passenger car built in the United States, and it was two inches longer than the largest Cadillac. After a brief pause the turntable began turning slowly, pausing every quarter turn to give the audience a look from every angle. People in the jammed assembly room went wild, shouting, whistling and cheering.
When the applause died down Tucker introduced his blonde daughter Marilyn, then 20, who could have traded places with any of the models. Marilyn was to christen the car, and when the turntable stopped she grabbed the bottle of champagne and stepped up. The bottle was wrapped in fine wire netting so broken glass wouldn't puncture the tires when the car was driven off, but that didn't bother Marilyn. She took a lusty swing at the front bumper and champagne splashed all over the front of her father's suit, shirt and tie.
Anything that followed unveiling and christening of the car couldn't possibly be other than anti-climax, but what came next was still good showmanship. Nine more girls walked across the stage one at a time from behind the curtain, each carrying a part of a conventional automobile duplicated in paper mache. Asked what they were carrying, the girls chirped, “A transmission from a conventional automobile,” and so on. These were the parts Tucker said his car wouldn't need. Then another drape slid back, showing big conference tables piled high with letters and telegrams, part of more than 150,000 which had come in from all over the world after first publicity on the new Tucker automobile appeared.
Tucker made the final talk, which ended the formal portion of the afternoon session, and said in closing:
“Let's get one point straight. I want to build cars and make money, of course. But there's something else. This country has been good to me and I feel a debt of gratitude. I'd like to repay that debt, in part, by contributing something to America—something that will mean much to this country's future, an automobile that will mean truly safe, economical and comfortable transportation for millions of my countrymen.”
After he finished Tucker introduced Hepburn, who started the car and drove it off the stage into the roped-off area where it stayed on display the rest of the afternoon. There, guards kept people from climbing over the ropes, and models added a decorative touch, while men from engineering and sales stayed by the car to explain design details to the curious. On the other stage were the chassis and various components of the automobile.
With the excitement over, people drifted out, some to go back home and others to their hotels to rest and freshen up for the night's activities in the Stevens Hotel, now the Conrad Hilton. The evening program started with a cocktail party in the swank Normandy Room, followed by a banquet and floor show in the grand ballroom.
While the show cost a lot of money it was immensely profitable to the corporation. Not many new franchises were signed because everybody was too busy, but many Tucker dealers who came in later had attended the preview and were tremendously impressed with the public's enthusiasm for the automobile, even though it wasn't demonstrated and there was no chance to examine it closely. The show was further profitable in that it carried public interest over the period from the stop order to opening of the stock sale July 15, and helped counteract the highly adverse publicity released by SEC with its announcement that the stock had been cleared.
And the show had one other result: it revealed dramatically to Tucker that something was haywire in his engineering department, and if the boys didn't produce some positive results over the next few months he had better start doing something about it.
But he had no time to worry about engineering then. The stock sale was set to open in less than a month. If the stock didn't sell there wouldn't be money to pay engineers anyway.