| |
N0KFQ > TODAY 26.12.14 16:00l 72 Lines 3456 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 43100_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Dec 26
Path: IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 141226/1500Z 43100@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.62
Dec 26, 1956:
Carmaker Preston Tucker dies
On December 26, 1956, the visionary carmaker Preston Tucker dies
of lung cancer. He was just 53 years old.
Tucker began his career in the auto industry as a mail messenger
at General Motors. He quickly worked his way out of the mailroom,
however, and before he turned 30 he was the vice president of a
Packard dealership in Indianapolis. There, he befriended racecar
designer Henry Miller, and the two men chatted often about how to
build a truly great automobile. They teamed up to build racecars
for Ford in the 1930s, but when the United States entered World
War II, Tucker turned his attention to the war effort. He
invented and manufactured a gun turret for Navy ships.
As soon as the war ended, however, Tucker was ready to start
production on his own line of cars--cars that, unlike the
recycled 1942 models that most car companies were turning out,
were entirely new. With their low-slung, aerodynamic teardrop
shape, Tucker cars looked like nothing anyone had ever seen. ("It
looks," wrote one reporter, "like it's doing 90 even when it's
standing still.") They drove that way, too: Their rear-mounted
engines were modified helicopter engines, and they had disc
brakes, fuel injection, specialized transmissions, and a third
"Cyclops" headlight that was connected to the steering wheel and
swiveled with the car's wheels. Ahead-of-their-time safety
features abounded: padded dashboards, "pop-out" safety glass
windshields and a reinforced carbon frame. (The car was even
supposed to have seatbelts, until one of Tucker's assistants
convinced him that they would make the car seem less sturdy and
less safe than it was.)
To build this amazing "Tucker Torpedo," the carmaker leased an
old Dodge plant near Chicago from the federal War Assets
Administration, which had been building B-29 bombers there. While
they waited for the WAA to clear out, Tucker and his team
hand-built 50 prototype cars by hand. (The first one, called the
"Tin Goose," was hammered out of sheet steel because engineers
could not find enough clay for a full-scale mockup.) Meanwhile,
because the company was almost completely broke, they solicited
investors any way they could. First, they sold dealer franchises;
then they sold stock to the public; then they began to sell car
accessories like radios and seat covers, all before the Torpedo
had hit the assembly line.
This was apparently the last straw for the Justice Department and
the Securities and Exchange Commission, which launched an
investigation in May 1948. The federal government's argument was
that Tucker never planned to build any cars--according to this
line of reasoning, he was just going to bilk his investors and go
out of business. As this was patently not the case, prosecutors
struggled to convince the jury; in fact, the accusations were so
specious that Tucker's attorney did not even bother to mount a
defense. Tucker was acquitted in January 1950, but the damage was
already done: Tucker lost all his investors, had to fire all of
his workers, and never built another Torpedo.
In 1988, director Francis Ford Coppola made a biographical movie
called "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." It received a good deal
of critical praise, but--perhaps like Tucker's cars--never really
found its audience, and the studio ended up losing money on the
film.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
Using Outpost Ver 2.8.0 c42
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
