Intricacies of the Tucker story 75 years later

The Tucker 48 by any measure is an intriguing and almost irresistible subject, but to focus on the car itself might be overlooking an equally interesting aspect of the Tucker narrative.

“The story’s really about Tucker, the man, his personality and how that got displayed in the product he was trying to bring to the public,” said attorney Steve Lehto, author of Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build The Car of Tomorrow. “It would’ve been fascinating to see – I believe just as fascinating – if nobody’d interfered with him, just to watch and see what happened. He might not have succeeded, but I’ll bet he would’ve built more than 50 cars.”

Lehto had just presented a program during the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the Tucker ‘48 at The AACA Museum in which he detailed Preston Tucker’s legal nightmares. His talk looked at some of the developments ranging from the merely unusual to the nearly inexplicable that came up during the course of the trials.

“Preston Tucker sold the stock, started the factory and started building cars,” he explained during the program. “The Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating Tucker, we do not know why. Trust me when I tell you, the extensive research I did, digging in the various archives including in Chicago, with the museum, with the (Tucker Automobile Club of America), I’ve read more legal documents, I had to file a lawsuit because of this book.”

When Tucker asked why, Lehto said, the SEC replied that it had found deficiencies in connection with the stock offering and the annual report. Typically, he said, errors could be corrected via an amended report, but when Tucker and his attorneys spoke to the SEC about that, the matter of the stock offering was brought up and he was told that a correction or amendment was not possible. He was also told the commission required information.

“They said ‘we may need to subpoena some of your documents, some of the things from your factory,’ “ Lehto continued, “and we know how that went. But the attorneys made a point with the SEC that ‘you understand that if you subpoena anything from us, it is confidential under federal law’ and they said ‘oh, of course we know that. If we subpoena anything from you, we will simply take it, we’ll protect it, it’ll be confidential, no one will ever see it.’ That was of course the first big lie in the story. We know what happened there.”

“So on June 6, 1948, Drew Pearson with his radio program syndicated nationwide announced that there was going to be this huge investigation into Tucker, it’s going to blow the thing sky high and all this hyperbole about how the investigation was going to wreak havoc on Tucker, which is an unusual concept, that the investigation hasn’t really begun yet, but this guy already knows how it’s going to go. He was well connected and he had the ears of some very, very important people in Washington. They would sneak him things, leak him things, and he’d put them out on his nationally syndicated program and then other news agencies picked this story up.”

The SEC, he said, soon acted and subpoenaed “everything but the people and the desks,” effectively shutting down the factory which could not work without documents such as blueprints, invoices and parts numbers. He said that Tucker’s attorneys sought to have the subpoena quashed, but were unsuccessful and the SEC stated that it would protect the information it had collected and sought disgruntled Tucker employees for interviews.

“They turned information over to a grand jury,” Lehto said. “ … There is no defense in a grand jury. The prosecutor can bring in whatever evidence they want, cherry-pick it, and tell the grand jury ‘look, we’ve got this evidence here. We want to file indictments to indict people.’ “

The SEC, he said, got its indictment and created a 561-page report which despite federal statutes requiring confidentiality, was leaked to the news media. The Detroit News headlined the story as would be expected of any newspaper uncovering such a scoop, but he pointed to something far worse for Tucker, namely the fact that the prosecution also had the report.

“By the SEC giving the report to the prosecution,” Lehto explained, “they could actually use that as a blueprint and they did. If you see the report, they went through it and cherry-picked the best disgruntled employees they could find and the best documents out of context they could find in an attempt to make this look like it was a better case than it really was.”

Tucker’s legal team was denied access to the report and he said that while the prosecution claimed in court not to be using it in the case, it later admitted to having had it. Lehto said that he’d found a copy in the trial archive and even with the advantages it provided, the prosecution’s case was weak, something strongly suggested by an action taken by the attorneys representing Tucker and his co-defendants, the company’s board of directors.

“They all waived their defense and they all had their own attorneys,” Lehto said, “so it took every single defendant and every single attorney to say ‘this case is so weak that we don’t need a defense.’ And so the case was that weak. Even during the trial, you could find observers who were saying things like ‘we’re waiting for something to happen, but nothing is happening.’ “

Lehto described the trial as “a farce” and cited the judge’s questioning the prosecution as to whether building and selling a car that wasn’t good was criminal. Some witnesses, he said, claimed that the design was crazy and the cyclops headlight was stupid in a trial on charges of mail fraud and violations in connection with the stock offering.

It added up to acquittal on all charges, but at the same time in the same Chicago courthouse, Tucker was facing lawsuits from those who’d invested, bought dealerships or pre-ordered cars, something Lehto said led to Tucker’s bankruptcy. The auction of the factory and its contents followed.

“Later on,” Lehto said, “Tucker gave interviews to magazines and in some of those, he talked about the fact that the business (was) turning out cars and if it had not been interrupted could’ve turned out more cars because it wasn’t just those cars that were being built on the pilot assembly line. They had parts, they had engines, they had all kinds of other stuff.”

The 50 pilot cars would have served as proof of concept and enabled Tucker to raise additional funding, he explained, but that became realistically impossible thanks to his name’s having been tied to the fraud charges while the acquittal was barely mentioned. He said that Tucker sued several publications, claiming they’d ruined his reputation by slander

Tucker’s death brought an end to those actions, Lehto said, but not before his attorneys learned via depositions that the SEC had provided the publications with the report claiming him to be a fraud. He said Tucker still did not have a copy of the report – the 561-page report mentioned above – when one of the reporters being deposed opened his copy seeking to answer a question. That led to back-and-forth as Trump’s attorneys stated that they had the right to look at it only to be told that it was still confidential, he said, but Tucker finally did get to see it.

The depositions also revealed that Harry McDonald, then head of the SEC, had provided the report to the publications and Lehto said that why he did so remains unclear as Tucker maintained that Senator Homer Ferguson was behind the entire matter, McDonald was from Detroit and the question was never answered. McDonald, Lehto said, refused as a government official to be deposed, but eventually backed down to some degree.

“He signed an affidavit,” Lehto explained, “where he admitted ‘I gave that report to the reporters. I understood it was a violation of federal law when I did it and I would do it again.’ So we know that Harry McDonald is the guy. He’s the guy who pulled the trigger. We know that. We just don’t know why.”

“He could’ve done it on his own because of the fact that he’s from Detroit and he’s helping out the Big Three. He could’ve done it at the behest of Homer Ferguson, the senator from Michigan, likewise. There’s no connection there, but I can tell you that when they took Tucker’s deposition, sworn testimony, they asked him ‘who do you think did this to you?’ and he said ‘Homer Ferguson.’ “

Lehto believes that Tucker probably would have prevailed in his lawsuits, but observed that there might have been more.

“I assure you,” he said, “that in his later years, Tucker probably didn’t like being around his attorneys, probably didn’t want to talk to an attorney, was probably just sick of courthouses and wished he could’ve gotten back to just building cars.”

Of the cars he did build, eight were on display for the celebration and among them was the Tin Goose.

“It’s probably the most important Tucker there is,” said Preston Tucker’s great-grandson, Sean Tucker. “Most of you know it was created for the first showing on June 19, 1947 … Part of what they talked about at the trial was that to make the Tin Goose, they’d just cut up a 1942 Oldsmobile, which they likely did use pieces of, but it’s pretty obvious that they built a car from scratch here.”

The Tin Goose differs in details from the rest of the cars ­– it has a unique interior and lacks suicide doors – but was sold with them at the bankruptcy auction. After passing through several owners, it was acquired by The Swigart Museum in 1992 and restored to running condition in 2018. Mike Tucker, also Preston’s great-grandson, emphasized the factory’s meticulous recordkeeping and said that Tucker 1001 is listed in the July 23, 1948 inventory as an “experimental” car.

“It’s like the Tin Goose,” he explained, “but not as much as the Tin Goose. It’s unique, it has a lot of unique features that they were kind of trying with this car.”

Originally using engine No. 1, it was later repowered with the converted Franklin aircraft engine and he said a September 7, 1948 inventory lists 1001 as sold to a dealer in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It’s now part of the David S. Cammack Tucker Collection at the museum, as is its original Tucker engine.

Mike Tucker said that Tucker 1015 appears as completed in the August 31, 1948 inventory and was sold to Henderson Tucker in Sacramento before experiencing a series of unusual developments.

“There’s a letter that we found from October 8, 1948 from Henderson to the Tucker Corporation that they are returning the car,” he said. “They traded 15 for No. 9 … The car had 8516 miles on it.”

After being rebuilt at the factory, he said, it passed through two dealers and ended up in Miami where it was sold in 1952. Fifteen years later, the Stone Mountain Automobile and Treasures Museum purchased it, but it was sold in 2009 and restored to what Mike Tucker called “one of the best examples out there.” It’s now owned by the Stahls Automotive Foundation.

Sean Tucker said No. 1022 was completed on September 4, 1948 and actually sold before that to a Kansas City, Missouri dealer. Having changed hands several times, it was able to avoid the factory auction and eventually became part of the Cammack Collection at the museum.

Mark Lieberman, Tucker Automobile Club of America Senior Director, described No. 1026 as “a very special car indeed, one of two Tuckermatics produced.” Preston Tucker, he explained, believed the Tuckermatic transmission was key to his car’s future due to its simplicity of operation. Two torque converters enabled it to function as a continuously variable automatic, but there was a problem.

“In order to change directions,” Lieberman said, “you had to shut the engine off. You could not go from forward to reverse with the engine running without causing a catastrophe in that transmission. Eventually, they had a small pedal on the floor that you operated with your heel in order to stop one of those torque converters and allow you to shift it, but they never completed the changes necessary inside the transmission in order to make that functional. So during the restoration, the pedal and the linkage were removed.”

No. 1026 was sold at the auction, he said, and became part of a traveling Tucker show before being parked in a Michigan quonset hut and deteriorating. It then became part of the Cammack Collection and in 2018, was brought back to running condition to appear at Pebble Beach.

Mike Tucker said that 1028 was completed on September 19, 1948 and assigned to the engineering department for testing at the Indianapolis Speedway. It was sold at the auction, he said, restored in 1992, went to the Tupelo Automobile Museum and in 2019 was purchased by the Maine Classic Car Museum.

“(No. 1044) is another car that has the completion document,” he continued. “It says ‘November 4, 1948.’ Well, we know the factory closed on October 28 of ‘48. They had 42 cars finished at the time, 1044 along with the other cars to get to 50 were actually finished by volunteer employees at the factory. They really did volunteer their time and finish these last cars.”

It appeared at the 1951 International Motor Show, went through different sales and he said that after a restoration, it became an AACA Senior car in 1981. It was then sold and set aside, Mike Tucker said, before Lieberman bought it, got it running and sold it. Photos taken during its second restoration show the amount of lead used in building the body at the factory.

“There’s a lot of patchwork on these cars from the factory,” said Rob Ida, who’s currently restoring a car for Lieberman, “so we can count maybe 12 pieces on the right side and 15 on the other side.”

“Keep in mind that they had a whole community of body shop workers that they hired to do these,” Lieberman added. “You cannot take one fender and put it on another car. You can’t take one door and put it on another car. They’re all handmade. They had wooden bucks that they were fitting everything to and then they’d hand-fit them to each automobile as they were assembling them. Lots and lots of lead. There is no real uniformity. These are 50 prototype cars.”

Lieberman now owns No. 1050, the last car off the assembly and carrying the last Tucker engine.

“We don’t have an exact finish date for the automobile,” he said. “I guess records at the time started to get a little looser. The factory was now being operated by a handful of volunteers who were completing the cars.”

Sold at the auction, 1050 was valued at $ 750 and needed to have its engine and transmission reinstalled. Lieberman said that it had no miles on its odometer when he bought it to restore to driveable condition.

“I was the first person to ever drive this car,” he said. “It has 38 miles on it today. The car drives like a new old stock Tucker because it is a new old stock Tucker.”

The celebration, said AACA Museum Executive Director Jeff Bliemeister, shows the level of interest Tuckers generate beyond the Tucker community.

“When you think about it,” he said, “50 Tuckers. What’s the chance you’re ever going to own a Tucker? Even the model is $ 100 and the car is $ 1.5 million. The average person can’t own a Tucker, yet here are 300, 400, 500 people who are fascinated by that car and want to know about it.”

“That’s amazing, 50 cars and all these people who are fans.”

For Preston Tucker’s great-grandsons, it all went a step further.

“Obviously it represents the 75th anniversary of Tucker generally,” said Sean Tucker, “but more personally for us, it’s the family legacy. It’s a pretty cool thing that people are still interested in this work that our great-grandfather did 75 years ago. Some people ask how we got into this or why we’re involved. ‘How would we not?’ “

If their great-grandfather had somehow dropped in on the event, they agreed, he would’ve been pleased at what he saw.

“I’d like to think he would be delighted at what he’d being seeing here,” Mike Tucker said, “all these people looking at his cars 75 years later and what he accomplished. He never saw that side of the story. It was negative the entire time up until his death. So I think finally seeing that he did fulfill what people wanted would make him feel awesome.”

“Vindication, to a certain degree,” said Sean Tucker. “Would he have thought there would be this many people interested in this car this long after the story? Even in his wildest dreams, I don’t think so. I think he’d be proud that what he came up with matters.”

He and his brother maintain a file of information on each car, even those that no longer exist. No. 1027, he said, was damaged beyond repair in an accident during testing at Indianapolis and No. 1023 was destroyed when fire leveled the warehouse in which it was stored. No 1018 met its end in an accident on the road.

“It slid into a tree and basically broke in half,” Lieberman said. “It was hit behind the doors and there was catastrophic damage. That car was moved around from place to place for quite a number of years.”

Combined with the documentation and records of the company and the legal troubles, the percentage of surviving cars provides evidence of the interest in Tuckers that’s existed from nearly the beginning and today, Tucker is one of the very few makes in the collector car world to be almost universally liked and generally free from criticism.

But it wasn’t always that way, as shown by the fate of No. 1042.

“That car was taken to the state fairgrounds and displayed for a period of time,” Lieberman said, “and it sat there somewhat abandoned. They decided to do something rather unconventional to raise a little money for another purpose and they sent out fliers that said ‘hit a Tucker for $ 1.’”

“For $ 1, you got the opportunity to take a sledgehammer to a Tucker and they pummeled it to death. There were a lot of angry people who were still out there and they relished the idea of taking out their frustrations to avenge their losses with a hammer on this car. They beat it to death.”

Even that, however, wasn’t the end. Lieberman said 1042 then found its way to Tennessee and was eventually scrapped.

“Years later,” he said, “the engine, the transmission, the axles and the various rear suspension pieces were found on a river bank in Tennessee and they made their way to the Hershey swap meet and were sold. They are upstairs on display.”

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