32 THE NEW TUCKER

ALL THROUGH the trial Tucker was planning a comeback—trying to figure out designs and methods that would avoid the mistakes made in the first round. He insisted throughout that it was no disgrace, nor even unusual, to fail in the automobile business. Ford and Durant both had failed and come back to win; he would do the same.

I worked with Tucker once more beginning in May of 1952. Some time earlier I had been with a Detroit advertising agency that was backing Taft for president, and when the nomination went to Eisenhower the agency lost interest. Tucker had been asking me to come back with him, so I moved out from Detroit and went to work.

The year before he had gone to Brazil with plans for an entirely new car. He found people who would put up the money, but only under the condition that he do the entire development work there, which he refused to do. He still might have worked something out if it hadn't been for the timing; there was a presidential election coming up and the people he was negotiating with were waiting to see how it came out.

Tucker's arrival at Galaeo airport, outside Rio de Janeiro, furnished unexpected entertainment for a crowd that was waiting when the plane came in. Other passengers included two high officials from the U.S. State Department, and the United States Ambassador to Brazil was there with his top aides. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the Embassy delegation was all set when the Brazilian quarantine officer boarded the plane, ready for a ceremony that would impress the natives and bolster national prestige.

But it was Tucker the officer called for, and as the Embassy group waited, he was whisked through customs without even checking his luggage, accompanied by two unidentified but apparently influential Brazilians.

Tucker left Brazil without making a deal, but he arranged to keep in touch with potential backers until after the election, and said meanwhile he would try to develop the car himself in Ypsilanti.

In Ypsilanti the tool company had plenty of work, including sub-contracts for military equipment that were bringing in good profits. Some of the Chicago people were with him again, including Dan Leabu and Warren Rice, who developed the first automatic transmission and was working on an entirely new design.

To build up the shop and bring in more work, Tucker decided we needed a brochure—not to promote the automobile, but to sell the shop's facilities and bring in business. A brochure, as before, meant pictures and it was another budget job. One night he asked his wife to dig out some 8 x 10 prints left over from the Chicago deal to see if there was anything usable. There was one excellent picture of Tucker, sitting behind a big desk with a distinguished-looking chap beside him.

“The picture's swell,” someone commented, “but who the hell is this guy?”

Nobody knew. In about an hour Tucker came back with the photo and said smugly:

“I know who it is. That's the King of Denmark. He was a prince then.”

Tucker was wrong, but not far off. The man who helped sell the Ypsilanti Machine & Tool Company in the new brochure was Prince Carl Bernadotte of Sweden.

As the new automobile began to take form, about the only resemblances to the last 48's were the rear engine, independent suspension and the crash pad on the dash. A year after the trial Tucker had said that, in his opinion, the 48 was already obsolete, even though it would still outperform plenty of current models at the time.

With the market nearing saturation in the higher-price brackets, Tucker said there would be no point in trying to build the first Tucker even if it could be done. So he refurned to his earlier concept of a low-cost car that would combine sports car performance with an all-around utility vehicle. When I started he already had spent several thousand dollars on preliminary development of a new four-cylinder opposed air-cooled engine, and had two men working on an entirely new automatic transmission. It is probable that during the year Tucker spent between $40,000 and $50,000 on the new design, including scale clay models, working drawings and prints, and patterns and castings.

People who were sold on the first Tucker always cherished the hope that there would be another Tucker car. To them the story ended when he died, so there is little point in describing the new design in any detail. Horsepower of the new engine was set for 130 and it should have given the car spectacular performance. With an entirely new body and chassis, the new job should have weighed around 2,000 pounds, which would have given it an impressive horsepower-to-weight ratio.

Tread was standard for operation off paved roads, and wheel base was planned somewhere under the smallest American cars. It would have the same pop-out windshield, and for added safety a roll bar. Chrome trim was almost eliminated, and on one model the usual chromed bumpers were replaced by rubber extrusions which fitted into modified channels. Production cost would be low and replacement simple. Tucker was still insisting on front fenders that turned with the wheels, but it was a minor factor in overall design. Most of us believed privately that they would shake off in the first thousand miles, but we conceded that the least Tucker rated was to find out for himself—after all, it was his money. As in Chicago, there would be plenty of time to talk him out of it later.

One passenger car design looked like a natural for Latin America, where much of the population depends entirely on taxis. This model used a split front seat similar to the Jeepster, but so arranged that it could be converted easily into a taxi with front seat passengers facing the rear. If performance and economy were anywhere near what was expected, Tucker said the Latin American taxi market alone should be good for a year's production. It would further provide the finest proving grounds any new automobile ever had, plus free demonstrations and advertising. For firsthand, authoritative information on any automobile, ask the hack jockey who drives one.

There was no reason to doubt that the new Tucker would perform even better than the 48's, but more important than either design or appearance were Tucker's plans for manufacture and sale. These looked as nearly foolproof as anything could be without actually trying them out. Under the plans there would be no big complicated sales organization, and no central factory as such.

Throughout the year work continued on design and drawings, and some patterns were made and a few castings. But when Tucker couldn't raise enough money to build a complete prototype he decided to close down until after the election in Brazil, and go back for another try.

It would have taken somewhere around $100,000 to build the kind of prototype Tucker wanted, and the shop wasn't making enough money to handle it. So just one year after I went to Ypsilanti he closed the plant except for a few small jobs, and rented out sections of the big building for income.

Tucker wasn't interested in just making money, beyond his immediate needs, if he couldn't build automobiles.

Could the Tucker be built today? The first Tuckers, the ill-fated 48's, are obsolete, even if the bugs were taken out and enough money could be raised to build them. But there is every reason to believe the new design could be built profitably under Tucker's detailed plans for manufacture and sales, and that the car would have even better performance and as great public acceptance as before.