Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow

by Steve Lehto

  One government department, the Supply Priorities and Allocations Board, simply ordered the auto industry to stop making cars. The industry resisted at first, asking if it could continue producing autos while also producing armaments. The government refused the suggestion and ordered auto manufacturers to devote their entire resources to the needs of defense.4 Car companies ran the last civilian cars off their assembly lines on February 10, 1942, and, barely missing a beat, began tooling for war production.5 Before the war ended a little over three years later, the auto industry accounted for 20 percent of all US production, including half the airplane engines, a third of all machine guns, and every truck the military used. It also manufactured $11 billion in airplanes and related aircraft parts.6

  While much of the manufacturing was done in automobile plants on repurposed assembly lines, some was done in plants built by the auto companies and by the federal government specifically for the purpose of building war machines. In its haste to build armaments, amid a confusing bureaucracy, the government overbuilt plant capacity. Some plants were not needed and some were simply too large or improperly planned. Truck shortages arose when truck plants were overhauled to build airplanes; locomotive plants were retooled to build army tanks at a time when locomotives were needed more than tanks.7 The government even paid for building some brand-new factories when the production plans lacked the materials necessary for their realization. Some wondered what would happen to the extra manufacturing capacity when the war ended and there was no longer a need to be mass-producing army tanks and heavy bombers.8

  Not only did the government control of the auto industry result in excess plants at the war’s end, but with no new car production during the war, Americans had been forced to make do with whatever cars they had before the factories were commandeered. By the end of the war, America’s car population was tired and ragged. Experts counted twenty-four million cars on the road, a third of them worth no more than a hundred dollars. If not for the lack of new cars, most would have been sold for scrap.9 Automakers realized that this created a vast market for new cars, believing ten million Americans were primed to buy them once they became available.10

  Preston Tucker was one of those who saw this opportunity, and he logically coupled it with his desire to create his own car. He decided to design an all-new vehicle from the ground up utilizing the latest technology available, particularly from the field of auto racing. And he would sell these cars to a starving consumer market.

  The Pic Article

  In 1944, as World War II was winding down, an automotive writer named Charles T. Pearson was one of many who speculated about what would happen in the auto industry when the war ended. What type of cars would be built, and when would new models be available to the public? Pearson poked around, and one day a source told him something intriguing: “Why don’t you go and see Tucker? I hear he’s got something.”1

  Pearson knew who Tucker was, having heard of his activities at Indianapolis with Harry Miller. He called and asked for an appointment to speak with him. Tucker invited him out to Ypsilanti Machine and Tool, where he was warmly received.

  Pearson was impressed. Tucker was well dressed and confident, and his business was thriving. He owned a large home; the upper floor of the two-story building behind it, which housed his shop and personal office, was filled with draftsmen. The place was so busy “people were stumbling over each other.” Tucker also had another large building a block away, filled with machinery and workers. Tucker’s company was manufacturing something for the war effort; Pearson wasn’t quite sure what, but the offices were a beehive of activity.

  Pearson became a believer:

  At first sight he was the typical small manufacturer so common around Detroit—well groomed, outwardly prosperous and self-assured. He talked readily and easily, but with reserve, in the manner of a man who commanded attention and expected it. From time to time he would refer to something important he had to hold back now but would reveal when the right time came. I caught no suggestion of the fanatic, yet in the animation of his expression, and the intensity of his brown eyes, I found the promise of a man who was going somewhere. Tucker acted as though he had something that would revolutionize the automobile industry, and his enthusiasm was contagious.2

  Tucker told Pearson that he did, indeed, have big news about the auto industry, but he was not prepared yet to make an announcement. The two stayed in touch. A short while later, Tucker invited Pearson to his house for dinner. Pearson met Vera and sat down for a meal of meat and potatoes. After dinner, Tucker and Pearson retired to the den and talked about cars in front of the fireplace.

  Tucker trusted Pearson and told him his plans for an all-new car. He was working on some deals that required secrecy for the moment, but he promised Pearson he could have the story once he was ready to announce it publicly. Tucker even gave permission for the reporter to see a man named George S. Lawson, who had made drawings of the proposed car, so long as Pearson kept the designs under wraps for the time being.

  * * *

  By enlisting Lawson to create the drawings of the revolutionary car he was dreaming of, Tucker had taken a step he would repeat many times while trying to launch his car: hiring men with extremely good credentials, as Lawson had spent the late 1930s at General Motors designing Buicks.3 When Lawson made a quarter-scale model of the Tucker design in clay, the model was so realistic-looking that Tucker had admen photograph it outdoors.4 With the proper background, the car appeared full-size and real. Photos of the model would soon appear in newspapers across America, and many readers would conclude that they were looking at a photograph of an actual car. For now, however, with the drawings and photos in hand, Tucker began recruiting people who might be able to help him launch his car company.

  One was Abraham Karatz, who used the name Harold Karsten. Karatz, a former lawyer and financial promoter, had a criminal record. The details were sometimes hazy, but it was widely reported he had spent three years in prison for conspiring to embezzle $55,000 from a Chicago bank. He was out of prison by 1938.5 Karatz was from Chicago and would be instrumental in helping Tucker start his car company, but his criminal record would haunt the project as well.6

  It was not Karatz’s legal background or financial dealings that led to his meeting Tucker, however. During the war, Karatz had acquired some government contracts to furnish the military with auto parts. One of the shops he hired to do the work was having trouble, and Karatz had been told to consult with Preston Tucker. When Tucker saw the blueprints Karatz was using, he spotted the problem: someone had made a mistake in the drawings and put down the wrong tolerances for the part. Tucker told Karatz to have the blueprints corrected, and when he did, it solved the problem.7 Karatz was impressed, and the two stayed in touch.

  By September 1945, the war was finally over, and Karatz had introduced Tucker to Floyd D. Cerf, a Chicago-based securities broker. Tucker showed Cerf the Lawson artwork and asked about raising money to launch a car company. Cerf liked the idea but told Tucker that mere ideas were unmarketable on Wall Street. It would be “necessary that he have a plant and organization and semblance of a product” before he could raise the necessary funds. Cerf would later say that Tucker seemed unfazed by the requirements and told him, “If that is what it took, he would go out and get it.”8

  While he was in Chicago, Tucker spoke to a reporter from the Chicago Herald-American and said he was going to launch a car company.9 The paper ran a small story, but the news was buried in a flurry of other events of the day. Few people paid any attention.

  Nonetheless, the time was right for an upstart auto company. As Tucker suspected, the existing car companies were hamstrung by years spent turning out army tanks and airplanes. Seeing the vast market before them and believing it would allow them to sell almost anything, the companies had decided not to invest much time or money in coming up with new models. Instead they planned to simply start churning out their prewar designs with little modification. As Tucker’s car de
signer Alex Tremulis later wrote, “To meet the unprecedented postwar demand for product, automakers hauled out their prewar dies, and with little variation, turned out cars that were only mildly face lifted versions of the cars most people had just worn out.”10

  Tucker returned to Detroit. On December 26, 1945, he, Karatz, Lawson, and a few others signed an agreement to form a company. At the moment they had no funds and nothing more than a desire to go into business together, but they agreed that Tucker would control 20 percent of any stock they created, and the rest, although owned by the others, would be held in a trust controlled by Tucker. They also agreed that once the company began operating, Tucker would be paid a $75,000 annual salary.11

  * * *

  After the agreement was executed, Tucker called Charles Pearson back and told the reporter it was time for his big announcement.12 Pearson interviewed Tucker and wrote an article that he sold to Pic and a few other magazines, which published variations of it. Titled “Streamlining That Car,” it exploded into the public consciousness and set in motion one of the most astounding series of events ever regarding a consumer product in America.13

  Pearson was mesmerized by his subject. He interviewed Tucker uncritically and wrote about Tucker’s plans as if they were a fait accompli. The subhead of the article read, “Detroit’s First Ultramodern Auto Already in Production—Designer of Rear-Engined ‘Torpedo’ Claims It Will Do 130 m.p.h. on Less Fuel.” It was a tone for which he would not only be criticized later but for which he would almost be criminally prosecuted.

  Pearson started with Tucker’s credentials. “At 42 he has a recognized place in automotive engineering and is known throughout the industry, both here and abroad.” He mentioned Tucker’s “association” with Harry Miller and Miller’s stellar record at Indianapolis. The “114-mile-per-hour combat car” was cited, along with a gyroscopic gun stabilizer and “the first fire control interrupter, a handy gadget that prevents preoccupied gunners from shooting off tail assemblies or chewing up propellers.” The implication was clear: Tucker was an accomplished inventor, and now he had turned his expertise toward the automobile.

  The writing flowed back and forth between what Tucker would do and what he had done. It was often unclear which was which. “The first super-super automobile job to get off the drawing board into the production stage is being put together at Detroit with only a little less secrecy as to exact mechanical detail than marked the early development of the Norden bombsight.” How imminent was production? Or had it already begun? The article hedged. All it told the reader was that the car Tucker was building “may make models now in production obsolete almost over night.”

  The article featured a full-page rendering of the Tucker Torpedo by George Lawson and bold predictions dressed as facts. “THE CAR will cruise at 100 m.p.h., [and] get up to 65 miles per gallon of gasoline.” The article lacked qualifiers; there was no language to suggest that the Tucker automobile was speculative or might never come to fruition.

  Among the car’s described features, some were quite outlandish. “The driver’s seat is in the center,” it said, to give the driver a better field of vision. The doors “will swing out and up to clear curbs when parked.” The car would have a “Cyclops Eye” center headlight, and the car’s fenders would turn with the steering wheel, allowing the fender-mounted lights to illuminate curves in the road. (Although unusual, this last feature was not entirely original to Tucker; steerable headlights were a popular aftermarket accessory on some prewar cars.)14

  The article threw other features of the car at the reader, with hardly a hint they hadn’t been tested or even built yet. The Torpedo was said to weigh only two thousand pounds, to be powered by a simpler but more powerful engine than those currently available, and to have an automatic transmission with fewer parts than its contemporaries. The power from the engine—placed in the rear of the vehicle—would drive the car through hydraulic torque converters, one on each wheel. It was a remarkably simple design—if it would work.

  The Tucker automobile would also be streamlined. While the concept seems obvious today, domestic auto manufacturers had not focused on it previously. As John Heitmann, an automotive historian, wrote, “Drag and aerodynamics were for the most part ignored in the U.S. even after World War II, the one exception being the abortive Tucker of the late 1940s.”15

  Along with the drawing of the car, the Pearson piece featured Tucker sitting at his desk holding a piston. More photographs across the bottom of the article showed the car’s components, including disc brakes and independent suspension parts, along with a photo purporting to show “HOW ROAD appears at 100 m.p.h. Note clear vision.”

  The article left the reader with the distinct impression that the Tucker Torpedo was going to turn the industry on its head. Since Tucker was not hamstrung by a legacy of building cars the old-fashioned way, he could start from scratch. His affordable car would be rear-engine, rear-wheel drive, with a sleeker outline, and have no obligation to follow rules laid down by anyone else.

  But one additional piece of information overshadowed the rest of the article: the car would cost only $1,000.16

  * * *

  The Pic article hit newsstands in January 1946. Though it took up less than three full pages in a magazine few people had heard of, it sparked an immediate media frenzy. Some of this was calculated. Along with different versions of the article he sold to other magazines, Pearson rewrote the material as a press release for Tucker, who let news organizations know about the Tucker Torpedo and the excitement it was generating. Other media organizations reprinted the material as news.

  Tucker had other ideas for attracting publicity as well. As the 1946 Indianapolis 500 approached, he decided to enter a car. He found one for sale that had been built by Harry Miller and was being driven by someone he knew, George Barringer. Tucker renamed it the Tucker Torpedo Special and told the press it contained some of the components planned for his new automobile: hydraulic disc brakes, independent suspension, and a six-cylinder engine, although it was a straight six. Tucker’s entry was reportedly the only one that did not require special racing fuel. Barringer did a great job qualifying, but the transmission failed after only twenty-seven laps and the Tucker Torpedo Special headed for the garage. Pearson and Tucker wondered if a failure on such a prominent stage might lead to negative press, but journalists didn’t seem to take note.17

  Increasingly, however, they were taking note of Pearson’s article. By the summer, the mainstream press was reporting Tucker’s plans, with many details drawn directly from Pearson. “Tucker Visions New Auto to Cruise at High Speed,” the Milwaukee Journal wrote.18 The Ottawa Citizen explained, “Fenders and Headlights Will Turn on Preston Tucker’s New Motor Car.”19 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette announced, “Engine-in-Rear Auto to Buck Car Industry.”20 In November 1946 Popular Mechanics highlighted offerings from the auto industry for 1947; right alongside photos and descriptions of the latest Big Three offerings was a photo of the Tucker Torpedo. It was Lawson’s scale model, but it looked real. The description made it even more believable: “Tucker Torpedo has six-cylinder engine in rear; curved back window extends into the top for full vision. This revolutionary car carries six passengers and will be in the ‘medium price class’—$1500 to $1800.” Nowhere was there any hint that the car did not exist yet.21

  Years later, Pearson claimed that he had believed everything he wrote about Tucker and the Torpedo’s imminent appearance. He had written stories on other companies and businessmen who told him they were on the verge of manufacturing something new, and they had always come through. He viewed the Tucker interview as business as usual.

  So when I wrote “off the drawing board into the production stage” high in the first paragraph I assumed, by the time the story was published some months later, that Tucker would have the castings and other stuff he said had been ordered. Many of the stories I was handling at the time followed the same pattern—as soon as they got parts and materials they were in business, a
nd the situation was getting steadily better. When I finally realized there weren’t any castings or even patterns I was at first resentful, but later had to admit that, from Tucker’s standpoint, there was nothing either dishonest or immoral at the time in referring to something that was still on paper as fact. In the year that followed I learned that to the irrepressible Tucker, with his boundless optimism and self-confidence, anything he had decided to do was already a fact, for all practical purposes, and there was no point in complicating things with a lot of tiresome detail and explanations.22

  Pearson’s faith in Tucker’s plans was not unusual. Many who met Tucker noticed that he never used vague and uncertain terms when describing his intentions. A young designer named Philip Egan noted that Tucker was a “mesmerizing champion of all the concepts of his Tucker ’48. [The] astounding description was not regarded by Tucker as a possibility; it was a fact. He was thoroughly convinced of it.”23 Tucker never actually said that he had built the engine; he just spoke of it with certainty, in the present tense.

  Pearson was not even the only journalist to be enthralled by Preston Tucker’s optimism. Tucker loved promoting his ideas, and soon other reporters were interviewing him and writing their own articles about his futuristic car plans. Depending on the editorial slant, a magazine would emphasize aspects of the car important to that magazine’s readers. Science Illustrated’s article “Torpedo on Wheels” focused on the hydraulic fluid drive system Tucker wanted to use: “Hydraulic torque convertors provide a direct power-transmitting system that does away with the customary clutch, transmission, drive shaft, differential, and rear axle.”24 It was said that it would use eight hundred fewer parts in its drivetrain when compared to a typical automobile of the day. Again, much of the article was in the present tense, as if the car had already been built.