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Chapter 16 Colonel McCormick's Hat Book: The Indomitable Tin Goose Subtitle: The True Story of Preston Tucker and His Car Author: Charles T. Pearson Publisher: Abelard-Schuman Year: 1960 |
16 COLONEL McCORMICK'S HAT
ABOUT A WEEK after the stock sale opened, Tucker told me it wasn't going so good, and what could I do about it? I asked him:
“Pres, have you got one car that will run around the block without stopping?”
He said he didn't have a single car he could depend on. I told him there was little I could do, because without a new angle we couldn't even get local publicity, much less national. What the newspapers and wire services wanted now was actual demonstrations of the car.
But something had to be done and fast, so he called Durstine. SEC still frowned on advertising during the stock sale, but technically there was nothing wrong with showing the automobile. So Durstine went into action, and this began the series of shows held across the country, during which the Tin Goose piled up more mileage than any other automobile in the world without ever turning a wheel, except to run up and down the ramp of the Conestoga freight plane which Tucker bought later.
Since the trial the Tucker deal has become a classic example in college and high school economics classes to show how a fast operator can fleece the public with a worthless product, by putting on a ballyhoo and selling stock. Instructors seldom get an argument except from some kid whose parents own and drive a Tucker, or whose father was a dealer and drove a Tucker during demonstrations put on around the country.
It may come as something of a shock to economics teachers to learn that the public didn't batter down the doors of brokers offices on the morning the stock sale opened, and that the public wasn't the pushover for Tucker stock that people have been led to believe. It took a lot of terrific work to sell even three fourths of the $20,000,000 issue by the time it was closed two months later.
Some shows had already been scheduled before the stock sale opened, but they received comparatively little publicity, partly because they came so soon after the Premiere. By far the most successful of these, for attendance and public enthusiasm, was the one put on at the New Products Exhibition, sponsored by the United Inventors and Scientists of America, in Los Angeles' big Pan-Pacific auditorium.
The car was flown out by the Flying Tigers and was on display one day when an emergency called it back to Chicago. There a showing had been set up in the Red Lacquer Room at the Palmer House for investment bankers, with a private preview earlier for the late Colonel Robert McCormick, publisher of the powerful Chicago Tribune.
Tucker had been hoping to get the Colonel on his side for a long time, because the Tribune was not only influential in Chicago but had a lot of weight in Washington too. Tucker finally succeeded in getting a commitment from the Colonel to come and see the car before the meeting for the investment bankers opened, and he had to get it back to Chicago fast.
In Los Angeles the Flying Tigers said the plane Tucker had chartered was on another flight and they refused to use another plane that was on the field. That put Tucker on the spot because he couldn't get the car back to Chicago overnight by rail. He looked at the plane on the field.
“How much?” he asked.
They told him $45,000, take it or leave it. Tucker took it; with millions at stake, $45,000 was small change. He called the auditorium to bring the car, and it was loaded and flown to Chicago.
From the airport the car was rushed to the Palmer House and jockeyed through the back entrance to a freight elevator. Jerry Thorp, then on the Durstine staff, was handling publicity on the show.
“I don't know how the hell they ever got it into the elevator,” Thorp said. “Maybe they stood it on end. But they did, and they got it in place just three minutes before the Colonel arrived.”
If Colonel McCormick had been bareheaded the demonstration might have changed the course of history. But he wore a hat and he was six feet four inches tall, and when he got in the front seat and straightened up his hat came down over his ears. He left shortly without comment, but from then on the Tribune played it pretty much down the middle. Tucker had made a good try, but circumstances were against him.
Back in Los Angeles the following day the exhibition set new attendance records and, with more than eighty exhibitors, the Tucker easily stole the show.
The odyssey of the Tin Goose is also the story of the Conestoga, which ended a short but active career in the mud beside the runway on a small Missouri airport, after a forced landing in a snowstorm.
From the side it resembled a hydrocephalic bug, with a bulging nose that was two floors high and a steep stairway connecting the lower compartment with the controls compartment on top. And as with a bug, all that held it together was its tough reinforced skin of stainless steel, which made it so heavy it was underpowered. New pilots would move the controls to put the ship in a bank and sit there wondering why nothing happened. It just took time. The Conestoga was clumsy but it was big—100 foot wing span and 68 feet long—and it made an impressive prelude to a show when it came in for a landing.
While maximum cruising speed was listed at 186 miles an hour, pilots said it had one gait—it took off, flew and landed at 90—and except in an emergency they would never consider a runway under a mile long.
Pilots never trusted the Conestoga and never went up without parachutes. Most of them considered it pretty much of a dog, but it was a faithful dog and only threatened to quit once. This was on a return trip from Oakland, California, when the gauges for the left wing and nacelle tanks failed to work.
The only pilot who stayed with the ship was William A. (Bill) Denehie, who was flying with Bob Windette at 13,000 feet over Holbrook, Arizona, heading for Amarillo to take on gas. Windette, at the controls, told Denehie: “Take over. Ill go down and fix some coffee.”
He took off his parachute, draped it over the seat and went down the stairs. Five minutes later, when he had his shoes off, getting ready to change clothes, he heard the left engine quit cold. Denehie flipped the crossover valve but nothing happened. They were losing altitude fast. Windette clawed his way up the stairway in his bare feet, and at the top he started putting on his 'chute.
"The hell with the parachute,” Denchie yelled. “Get that auxiliary pump going!”
With the throttle wide open, the engine caught. They headed for Winslow, the nearest gas stop on the route, and there they had to wait until night for the air to become heavy enough for the plane to get off the runway.
At last report two Conestogas of the twenty or so that were built were owned by the Flying Tigers, and another had been abandoned and left in one corner of the airport at Mexico City.
Except for the Pan-Pacific show, which was handled by their own organization, Travers masterminded the shows and he gave them the same deluxe treatment as the Premiere. At one of the shows in New York Travers didn't like the models the agency sent over, priced at $50 each for the day.
“Are these the best you have?” he demanded. The agency man hastily assured Travers that their top string included the most beautiful girls in the world, but they would cost him $75. Travers said send them over, so the same girls came back with $75 price tags.
For stirring up public interest where there was money to buy stock, the show at the Museum of Science and Industry at Rockefeller Center in New York easily topped the entire list. There wasn't a door big enough to get the car through so they had to take out a window. The car was run inside on a Tuesday night in August, with the show scheduled to open Thursday.
Wednesday brought a typical Tucker riot. Carpenters and electricians were setting up the stage and turntable, and advertising people and models were running through a dress rehearsal when an excited attendant burst into the office of the museum director, Robert Shaw, without even stopping to knock.
“The place is mobbed,” the attendant gasped. “Thousands of people hollering to get in.”
The New York Sun, the only newspaper in New York to carry the announcement, had goofed, and it explained what happened later in a house ad under the caption “Was our face red!” The newspaper ran the announcement with the wrong copy, which said “Opening Wednesday” instead of Thursday. Shaw had to let them in or call for help, so the rehearsal was postponed, workmen put the car in position on the unfinished stage and the doors were opened without any admission charge.
During the days that followed, the Tucker car outdrew every show on Broadway. Variety noted the event under the headline:
Which, in translation, meant the Tucker car drew box office returns of $42,000 the first week. The story said:
“Broadway sho biz grosses may be caught in a downbeat, but the public evidently still has money to spend for an attraction if it's something it wants to see. That fact was pointed up sharply this week by the first public demonstration of the now Tucker automobile, which will gross an estimated $12,000 for the first seven days ending tomorrow. And, in all probability, will be held over an extra couple of days.
“Figure represents more than three times the average weekly grosses at the smaller Bway firstrun filmeries, such as the Globe, Gotham or Victoria. Tucker car, claimed to be the first one actually to incorporate modern postwar design, including an engine in the rear, has been playing to a average of 15,000 people daily at the New York Museum of Science and Industry in Radio City. Admission is a straight 48¢, including tax. Gross has been considered especially phenomenal in view of the fact that the display hasn't been advertised nearly so much as the average firstrun picture.”
The nearest contender was Ethel Merman in “Annie Get Your Gun,” which grossed $37,000 the same week for the first time since opening at the Imperial Theater, where previous receipts were never under $44,000.
The New Yorker gave the show more than two columns, largely adjectives, in its “Talk of the Town” section, describing Tucker as “tall, handsome, clean-shaven, tight-lipped, curly-haired man wearing a dark blue suit and brown-and-white wing-tipped shoes ... tailed by a retinue.”
The show resembled the rest, with the car on a turntable and models adding a touch of glamour, and one incident the customers didn't see was in the best Tucker tradition. One of the announcers in the National Broadcasting Company upstairs heard about the exhibit and came down. Before the show started he crawled under the car to look at the engine, and while he was under somebody turned on the switch that started the turntable.
Tucker came down the aisle to open the show, in his lapel a carnation and on his arm Ginny Simms, who was currently thrushing at the Waldorf. Odd sounds seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the car, but Tucker couldn't see anything wrong. He went through his routine and left.
When the turntable finally stopped the disheveled announcer wormed his way out, somewhat scratched up but not seriously hurt.
Shaw said there were more than 100,000 paid admissions, with thousands of people coming to ask about the automobile during the ten-day showing. The exhibit was the idea of museum officials, who called Tucker and arranged to have the car brought to New York. Tucker got no part of the paid admissions and no attempt was made to sell either franchises or stock, though girls took the names of people who wanted further information, which was mailed to them. Shaw said people who saw the car were told clearly that it was a handmade prototype, and that certain changes would have to be effected before it could be put in production.
By using the Conestoga to make fast overnight jumps, the car was exhibited in most of the major cities in the United States and in Havana before the stock sale closed, and beyond any question it was an important factor in selling the stock. One of the first shows in the Chicago Arena drew more than 100,000 people, and at the Canadian National Exposition in Toronto the Tucker was a major attraction. Record crowds turned up in St. Louis and Boston, as shows followed in dizzy and bewildering succession.
The stock was barred in only two important states, Michigan and California. Tucker wasn't particularly surprised or bothered at being barred in Michigan, because he was already meeting opposition from the industry, which had strong representation in Lansing. But being barred in California was bad, because if the stock could have been sold there he probably would have raised the entire $20,000,000, so great was public interest following the Pan-Pacific show.
Tucker tried everything he could think of but he was never able to reach Governor Earl Warren personally, and the stock was still barred in California when the issue was closed. Early in September sales lagged so badly that Tucker told Cerf to call it off, and on September 12 Cerf handed Tucker a check for $I5,007,000. This was the corporation's share after deducting commissions to Cerf and brokers who participated in the offering.
In a press release the same day, Tucker said the stock sale brought the cash position of the corporation to more than $17,000,000, in addition to some $2,000,000 in notes from distributors and dealers for franchises. The same day War Assets made Tucker's lease official in a telegram to the City National Bank in Chicago.
Tucker had gone a long way in less than two years. From a small office in Ypsilanti he had progressed to the world's biggest factory, with more than $17,000,000 cash and an automobile the public was ready to buy almost sight unseen.