Preston Tucker’s life trajectory, from his first job, when he adopts rollerblades to navigate the corridors of the Cadillac Motor Company and thus deliver mail faster (the initiative ended in dismissal when in the corner of a corridor he is led to his boss), to the point of becoming a builder of his own automobiles, is that of a nonconformist, that of an adventurer.
After his experience on skates, he works as a policeman, but soon returns to his passion, the automobile, becoming a salesman and even a manufacturer of racing cars: the Miller-Tucker, who will race in Indianapolis in the 1935 edition. World War II, founded the Tucker Aviation Corporation, in Michigan, to supply the army. Once the contest is over, he has to reorient his work. At last he will be able to realize his old dream: to create his own car brand.
Francis Ford Coppola had hurt the passion for the Tuckers, of his father, the composer Carmine coppola
In 1945 the American automobile industry is in full creative paralysis. In 1943 and 1944 the construction of private cars had been stopped and the factories only produced military vehicles or airplanes. After this parenthesis, the manufacture of private cars is resumed, but in most cases they are old models from 1942. It was not until 1949 that cars with a more modern aesthetic began to appear, but, apart from this, the big three of Detroit, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are not very innovative. However, the climate of reconstruction is conducive to ambitious, independent and adventurous, to small builders capable of betting on something different.
But no one has the audacity of Preston Tucker. He, who had sold cars for others, wants to see his name at the entrance of a factory. At this time, the American government made available to individuals the possibility of buying or renting, at ridiculous prices, military factories that have lost their usefulness.
Tucker managed to convince many dealers and salespeople
Tucker takes over the facilities that Dodge had used to manufacture the engines for the B-29 flying fortresses. To use this plant, you have to justify a capital of fifteen million dollars, which you do not have. A rental agreement is signed on September 18, 1946 with the commitment to raise the money before March 1 of the following year. Thus the Tucker Corporation was born.
Start the dream
Tucker must fill the box, but to convince the shareholders he has to show them the revolutionary car he had promised. Aware of the importance of design in the society of the “American Way of Life”, he turned to one of the most original talents, Alex Tremulis, who made the sketch of the car in six days. Tucker wanted, and needed, to finish the car in two months and have it visible in the form of a rolling prototype, not just a model kit. Tremulis, a fan of aerodynamics, had the freedom to be different from everything else. As a starting point, Tucker had decided that his car should carry the engine back, an arrangement that was not very widespread at this time and less among large saloons, all with a front engine.
The prototype, dubbed the Tin Goose, is finished in a hundred days and although some elements of a 1942 Oldsmobile have been used to save time, it is nothing like the rest of the great American automobiles: low silhouette, a front with the entrance radiator air integrated in the bumper and a central headlight that rotated in the direction of the direction, autoclave-type doors biting the roof and no rain gutter, sharp rear, six exhaust pipes…. And a spacious, comfortable interior that seeks to take care of safety, something unprecedented at this time.
Alex Tremulis’ original design wears a rear-engined saloon
On June 19, 1947, Preston Tucker presented the Tin Goose to five thousand people in Chicago, and began a tour of the country with productions worthy of Hollywood.
Clients like Manolete
There are many commissions (among them the bullfighter Manuel Rodríguez “Manolete”) and two thousand people buy the franchises to become distributors of the brand. But the development of the car has not yet finished and the original engine, without time to tune it, gives problems. Preston Tucker decides to use a helicopter engine, an air-cooled flat six cylinder from Aircooled Motors. The first production car leaves the factory on March 9, 1948: it is spectacular and different. A few hundred shareholders visit the factory. Apparently the chain works.
But the reality is different. There is no money and Stock & Exchange Commission officials, intrigued for a long time by the businessman’s continued waste, burst into offices and find themselves with red numbers that exceed the worst predictions.
Manufacturing ceased in August 1948, when only fifty-one cars were actually finished. The workers are laid off, and shareholders and concessionaires, who have invested 26 million dollars, take legal action. On January 28, 1950, the long process ends: Preston Thomas Tucker is acquitted of the charges, but his adventure is over. At just 53 years old, cancer ends his life on December 26, 1956. Shortly before, he has written an article for Cars magazine under the title “My car was too good.” Without a doubt, an epitaph.
The presentations followed one another with spectacular staging
Forty years later
Among those buyers who had ordered a Tucker, there is a renowned composer and conductor: Carmine Coppola. He is passionate about cars: one of his sons has Ford as a middle name, in honor of Henry Ford, and in front of Francis.
Yes, it is Francis Ford Coppola, who will become the creator of unforgettable films like ‘Patton’, ‘The Godfather’, ‘The conversation’ or ‘Apocalypse Now’. And he will compensate his father by buying, in 1979, one of the Tuckers manufactured, which will be later followed by a second unit.
He is obsessed with the brand, and the personality of its creator. And in 1988 he premiered “Tucker: The man and his dream” (Tucker: the man and his dream), produced – the film costs 24 million dollars – by George Lucas, owner of another Tucker. Coppola, who shoots the film at a difficult time in his life (he has just lost a son in an accident), signs it as Francis Ford, a very significant detail: the middle name is only used in those works that he really considers his own and not as a commission. The director reflects in her the adventurous character, of misunderstood, of fighter against the great companies, of Tucker. It is a role with which he identifies himself. Perhaps that is why he is somewhat lenient with his character, played by Jeff Bridges, and transforms him into a charismatic being and a victim. And he even modifies his family environment, with the beautiful Joan Allen in the role of his wife Vera, along with Martin Landau as Abe Karatz, one of the first promoters of the company, or the Canadian actor Elias Koteas as Alex Tremulis.
In The man and his dream (1988), actor Jeff Bridges played the role of Preston Tucker
Coppola also adapts some of the episodes of the gestation of the car. Tucker had rented the Indianapolis track to test his car (he uses eight units) running at high speeds, while Coppola does these tests on an 800-meter circuit.
If there are enough licenses in the script, they were instead very strict with the essence of the Preston project and with the cars: no less than twenty-two authentic Tuckers were used (almost half of those manufactured). In some scenes on the assembly lines, cash was increased by ordering plastic body parts from specialist Tom Sparks. And when you look at a crashed Tucker, it’s actually a Studebaker in disguise.
Preston Tucker would claim at the end of his days that his car was too good
But ultimately the film awakened the memory of an American dream, that of Preston Tucker, a life with all the ingredients of a movie. It only remained to shoot it, and Francis Ford Coppola did it, with the soundtrack, of course, by Carmine Coppola.
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