I had a Tucker radio head knob set .spelled Tucker on the push buttons...... it operated cables.. would there have been radios that were put in something else with that name?
Nope, they are quite common Motorola radios used in different cars. But the one spelling TUCKER were made to the tucker! But as some of you know Tucker started selling spare parts to the car before he actually set the car into production, so there is actually a lot of radios for sale. They often come up on ebay
Wow! Thanks for the pics SuperFleye! My friend kept promising to send me copies of his, but he's "digitally challenged" and has not made the effort. I would be curious if the same garage is in the backround. That I am aware, the current owner of the car did not claim he worked at the plant. My brother knew of the car from many years back when it was located in MKE. To his knowledge, the top bow set is from a post-war GM auto. There is more claims surrounding this auto but I see no point in reciting them. With the Tucker story being such an adventurous and romantic part of automobile history, it gets hard to sort facts from tall tales. Tales that seem to grow taller as years go by also. ! All in all, the owner had indeed made the decision to sell the car in recent years, and it sounds like fun if went up on BJ this year! An interesting tidbit I found: "Otto Kerner, the US Attorney who had aggressively investigated Tucker for fraud, intriguingly became the first Federal appellate judge in history to be jailedfor stock fraud."
the owner of the convertible claims it's car number 1009c (c for convertible) his agent says it's body number 1057. the agents claim is that they took completed body number 1057 off the assembly line and took it to Lencki Engineering for the conversion. while it was at lencki the whole deal got shut down (you know the story) after that it was given to one of lencki's employees and removed from the property incomplete. the problem with all of this is there is not one piece of evidence to back up the claim that it is factory built or a prototype. alex tremulis and tuckers own sons claim there was never a convertible in the works at all. there was a drawing for a future convertible but the body style was slightly different. there have been a couple of tucker owner/experts look at and touch the car. they claim it's nothing more than cobbled together "left overs" from the factory. the owner said last year that he was going to auction off the convertible and #1043 together at bj in 08. didn't happen. he is trying to get a huge payday from a myth he created. he claims the car is worth $400,000, and it would be if it where real.
they sent the radios out in advance to dealers and customers to prove that the car was real. there were also complete luggage set that were custom made to fit in the trunk some of those are still floating around. you can get some parts that where factory left overs. they come up on ebay from time to time.
There is a beautiful one at an aviation museum in Palm Springs. I can't remember the name of the museum off the top of my head. -Chris
my dad almost bought one back in the early 70's but my great grand mother would not give him the $1500 for the car I wonder what the cars would bring today
Thnx 50mercfan! Actually, I don't know the Lenecki story. Intriguing. My brother told me what building it was in and the area of MKE where it had been located. And it was in the past year or so that some promo materials were assembled for the attempt to market the car. The $400k is in the range of what the guy was looking for, yep. It's great to hear some info about this car as the only info I had gotten was originally from the current owner. My friend who viewed the car is a straight shooter, but he is a street level auto enthusiast who does not claim to be an expert, nor would he intentionally dispense false information. Auction companies will insist on the proper documents to support claims when selling historical artifacts and art treasures, etc.. Standard procedure. If BJ did not want to try to sell this car, that may be saying something. It would be cool to see this car finished some day, regardless of it's origin!
I'm very proud to say that I have seen six of them in person. I am always for the underdog, and he was the ultimate. Now I gotta rent the movie again.
My dad just painted and detailed a Tucker flat-6 for a museum display. I thought they were pretty rare, but really.. they aren't. Same as the radios, there were some sent to future dealers intended to be service parts for cars that were never built. Still pretty neat though!
I grew up in tucker ga, my parents still live over there. I saw Mr. Cofer's car when they released the tucker movie. He had his car parked in front of the theater's ticket window. Troy Road Kings C.C. Atlanta GA
Sweet car. Its neat that I live in the same town that he started his company from. They have a local auto museum with some of his stuff, next door to the only Hudson dealer left.
Rob Ida is currently also planning to build the Carioca. Many other have tried during the years, but I haven't seen any completed yet. This is Rob's model. I'm not sure if it is me, but it looks like he has to section it and do something with the propotions in order to make it look like Preston's skectches. More info about this build can be found here:http://www.robidaconcepts.com/page/page/2648005.htm Myself, I really like the first concept drawings of the Tucker
I worked for John Janecek, from Springfield, Oregon. He bought it in the 60's. He purchased a wrecked Mercury station wagon (fell off a transport truck onto its roof I think) and put the running gear under the Tucker body. He also used the Mercury dashboard. As far as I know he drove that car all over the country. I think he sold it because of his deteriorating health. Not sure if he's still with us. Anyway I adjusted the belts on it once. My claim to fame
Well mercfan, sometimes a lot of the fun about owning a certain type of rare car is when the owner teases others about it, talks about it, etc.. One thing I was told about this car is the owner has had it a very long time. Even as an unmolested sedan made from extra parts, it would attract a lot of attention. I believe the owner is comfortable enough that he is not desperate to sell, so he may just sit on it forever. BUT... it WILL surface sooner or later. Your opinions are the same as mine, I couldn't agree more. Allow me to bore you with nonsense and yammering! With the huge market demand, other upstarts were in the market. Kaiser-Frasier nabbed the Willow Run plant for their effort, Crosley made a go, etc.. But Tucker scared the crap out of some powerful people in the industry, slinging mud and stepping on toes along the way, absolutely. Toning that ego down a little bit could have gone a long way in reducing the size of that target on his back. No large manufacturer wanted to push seat belts at that time. Why, that would insinuate that their cars were not safe, oh my! Hard, noggin-knocking dashboards and windshields and the like. It was very cool that Tucker wanted a higher level of safety. Accident injuries were a reality that others wanted to sweep under the rug. Besides, the Tucker lines, proportions, and styling was ahead of the game. A striking car that commanded attention. It made the other newly styled post-war cars look stodgy I would say. I always did wonder about the intention that passengers could dive to the floor to be safer in an impending accident. I just don't see the average person reacting that quickly. I would like to see the letter that Tucker's own CEO wrote the SEC in September of '47 claiming the stockholder's capital was being mishandled. Talk about ouch! I guess it could be said that Tucker was a guy that walked into a bar and started picking a fight with the biggest guys in there. He lost. It might to have been better to go have a beer quietly, and make a few friends first.
wow your a lucky guy. that is car #1046. it recently sold for a little over $200,000. the new owner is thinking of putting the tucker gear back under it. the frame for #1046 is mia. i would leave it alone and drive it myself, but it's not mine i guess. the story on the conversion has always been that he updated it for his daughter to drive. not true?
If the Tucker in the Coppola Museum is real, which all the signs around it say it is, Then I've seen and touched a real one, it's a very well put together car. Lots of information about it at the winery in napa where the car sits. Take a tour and taste the wine, and monterey cheese. and of course... the Tucker and movie memorabilia.
when i was in my twenties, (i'm 59 now) two friends and i went looking for old cars. ended up in west virginia, sistersville. found an old yard that had cars with BIG trees growing up thru them. went to the house, knocked, no one answered. curiosity got the best of us (would have got you too ) went snooping, got escorted out by an old man with a pistol. got home, told my dad of the experience and said..."we saw a car in there that had a headlight in the middle of the hood" my dad immediatly said "that was a tucker" place is long gone but its still in my dreams.
I've seen a couple over the years at B-J auction. A green one and a gold one. Both had the engine in the rear and appeared original........... Talked to the owner of the gold one for a while. Nice guy and he showed us lots of interesting things about his car.
I hope I'm not spamming here, but... For anyone interested in learning about the creation of the Tucker Torpedo from one of the people involved would be well advised to pick up a copy of " Design and Destiny: the making of the Tucker Automobile" by Philip S. Egan. Mr Egan was an Industrial Designer working for J. Gordon Lippincott Design out of New York and he was an instrumental part of the Tucker design team. I highly recommend the book as it will give you great incite into the design, engineering, decisions, egos and even business issues that was albeit for a brief shining moment, the Tucker Automobile. I've attached a few pix from the book... The first pix of a young man leaning over an 1/8 scale clay model of a proposed Two-Door Tucker Talisman is the author himself, Philip Egan. The second pix shows four men around a full-size clay. The last man on the far side working on the B-post area is Egan as well. They are working on final touches to the Lippincott model just before a review with Preston Tucker. The third pix shows the Tremulis and Lippincott models side by side in a design competition. The final design is a mix of both. The fourth pix is a 1946 Tucker Torpedo ad from Science Illustrated. Buck Rogers would have been proud to drive that!! The last pix is the cover of the book, just in case you decide to look for it. Again, if you have even a passing interest in the Tucker and want to get past the Hollywood dramatization and read the real story from someone who helped create the car then I highly suggest you seek out this book. If you check the usual outlets, you can still find copies. Happy reading!
a few years ago i met up with a guy named Chick, he had a real Tucker up in a place in Canada and he made a fiberglass mold off the real one, he then made a body and put it on later model chassis and drove it around. I've only seen pictures of both of his cars but I have seen the mold. The guy was seemed ingenious, he hand made hubcaps out of stainless to an exact replica of the originals. He said the Jay Leno writes him a letter every year to buy the real one for 100k or something like that and Chick refuses every year.
I saw one at the dealer showroom in L.A.. My Dad took me there, was a good size crowd lookin at it. My Dad was kinda car guy , he liked to go to the new car presentations every year, it used to be a big deal , with big WW2 seachlites lighting up the sky, recall that it was kinda exciting. yea the forties had a lotta car activities.
I saw a gold one at the B-J too. I got really lucky, I actually got to see it drive by me on the way to the auction tent. I figured that's going to be the one time in my entire life I get to see and hear a Tucker drive by me, only a few feet away too. Seeing that Tucker drive by helped justify the price of entry to the B-J several years for me.
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