This car means everything to me. This car is the reason why I love cars. I’ve never really been able to post about it, but now I can.
Presently, there are only 47 of these beauties left in the world, of a total of 51 built. The man I met, who owned three of them, had the largest single collection of Tucker cars and info. Every blueprint for every nut and bolt, this guy had. And I looked at all of them. He also showed me the cars, for free, and I nearly died. I’ve been worshipping this car for years, and there I was, standing right next to it. I wasn’t supposed to touch it, but I did. I don’t care. I’m never going to be that close to one again. I touched it. And that statement is true. The guy who owned these cars past away a little over a year ago. David Cammack. He donated ALL of his collection to the ACAA museum in Hershey, PA. This means that I will never get that close to them, without a velvet rope separating me. This was also one of the first times seeing a car that old. It struck me as odd. I remember thinking how large the headlights were. They look smaller in the pictures. They’re not. They’re well over a handfull.
A Little History:
After WWII, studies showed that the one thing returning American soldiers wanted was a new car. This was great for auto manufacturers except for this: During the war, car companies took out all of the existing 1941-42 models to the back lot for the remainder of the war to make room for aircraft manufacturing. When the war was over, they took all those cars back, and sold them as new models. This meant that if you bought a 1947 or 1948 car, you were really getting a 41-42 model. Preston Tucker, featured in my Camoria Automotive page, decided that he wanted to build a new car. And not just a car that was put out on a lot, but a car that actually had new technology. Here are some of the things Tucker was talking about putting in his car before anyone else:
Disk Brakes
Seat belts (eventually removed from the car because advertisers said it made the car look unsafe)
A center headlight that turns with the car when it goes around a corner
Cruising at 100mph
Rear-mounted engines in an American car
Pop-out windshields so you didn’t hurt your face on the glass
Padded dashboards
A crash chamber in replacement of a glove compartment, where a passenger could duck in the event of a crash.
Once, while testing the car on a racetrack, the car crashed, completing several barrel rolls. Not only did all of the implemented safety features work, but the driver walked away without injury, and the car drove away as well.
Tucker failed only because his competitors, the Big 3, saw the threat his company posed on their market share. After the war, if you wanted a new car, you were put on a new car list. Any returning soldiers, appropriately, would be put at the top of that list. Tucker had the idea that if you paid for either the seat covers, the radio, or the complementary luggage as a down payment, you would not have to be bumped down on the list. This raised him millions in a matter of weeks. That’s when the SEC accused him of fraud, because he was selling parts not cars. He didn’t go to jail, but he lost everything, the right to make his cars, his factory, even the right to use his name on new cars. He walked away with only 51 built. I saw three of them. Number 1001, the first “production” version, #1022, the one Jeff Bridges drove in the movie version of this story, and #1026, the one and only automatic version. I know this has been a long post, but I feel very deeply about this car. I hope everyone has a car they feel this passionately about. If you do, please share. I am also posting the video about the late Mr. Cammack and his spectacular collection.
Preston Tucker posing next to one of his cars, and me posing next to one of his cars (mind the hair).
