The story of the Tucker Torpedo is one that’s much more interesting than most of many failed car startups. Preston Tucker’s business was the subject of SEC investigations and conspiracy theories. But, in reality, it was just a case of if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Preston Tucker had been an ambitious man for a while. He was heavily involved at the Indianapolis 500 in the 1930s and during World War II led unsuccessful attempts at developing an armored car. Also during the War, the auto industry and the government was promising big advancements for postwar automobiles. Magazines were filling with photos of rear engined, glass domed contraptions that were never to be. Tucker wanted to make this “car of the future” into a reality.
Tucker had many ambitions for the Torpedo. It was to have center steering position, a rear mounted aluminum engine with oil driven valves instead of a camshaft, fuel injection, a padded dashboard for safety, disc brakes, 4 wheel independent suspension, self sealing tubeless tires, and instead of a transmission, there would be torque converters for each of the rear wheels. The engine in particular is interesting. It was to be a 9.7 liter 6 cylinder, larger than any engine in any production car since. It was claimed it could make 200 hp (later lowered to 150) and 450 lb ft of torque at just 1800 rpm, it was further claimed the engine would turn at only 1000 rpm at 60 mph. Many people were sold on the dream and an IPO raised $17 million.
But quickly, many features turned out to be infeasible. The oil pressure at idle speeds was not enough to run the valve train, it also required a tremendous amount of cranking power, up to 60 volts, to get started. It also only made 88 hp. After much wasted effort, the engine was scrapped and instead a flat 6 engine made by the Air Cooled Motors Company, meant to be put in the Bell 47 helicopter, was substituted. The engine produced 150 horsepower like Tucker intended and for unknown reasons was switched to water cooling. The torque converter drive had to be taken out too. But the transmission used instead was still pretty neat, it was a continuously variable transmission, with no fixed gears, developed with help from Warren Rice, who had created Buick’s Dynaflow transmission.
The car’s debut on June 19, 1947 was an omen. The night before, one of the prototype’s cars suspension arms snapped under the weight (it was much heavier than production models). Because of how much effort it required to start the 9.7 liter engine, it had to be left on during the event. But the engine had to be left at full throttle for the valvetrain to work, which produced lots of noise. Tucker had the band play very loud to drown out the noise. When the car was driven onto its platform, coolant boiled over and released steam.
It was planned to build 51 pilot models for testing and improvements before starting mass production. One of the ways that Tucker raised money was to sell accessories such as seat covers as well as selling dealer franchises before the car was in production. This attracted the attention of the SEC which believed that the car would never show up and Preston was conning investors. On September 26, 1947, Harry Toulmin, Tucker’s chairman of the board, resigned and wrote to the SEC that he left "because of the manner in which Preston Tucker is using the funds obtained from the public through sale of stock.". In late 1947, the prominent columnist Drew Pearson claimed that the car “couldn’t even back up” and was a “fraud”. The prototype at the unveiling did lack a reverse gear, but production ones did not. But all this bad publicity destroyed public confidence in the company. Investors dumped Tucker stock and dealers sued to get their money back.
In 1949, the SEC opened a grand jury investigation. On June 10, Tucker and 6 of his executives were indicted for mail fraud, securities law violation, and conspiracy. The trial began on October 4, the same day that the factory closed. The defense was able to use the prosecution’s witness against them. One dealer who claimed he lost $28,000 from his investment admitted that the car given to him had successfully gone 35,000 miles and could comfortably hit 90 mph. An SEC accountant who claimed that Tucker had spent less than 1/7 the money from investors on R&D admitted he had no evidence of his allegations. On January 22, 1950, the jury acquitted the Tucker executives of all charges. At the end of the trial, Preston said, “Even Henry Ford failed the first time out”. He would attempt another venture with a group of Brazilian investors, but it never got off the ground. Tucker died of lung cancer the day after Christmas in 1956 at age 53.
All the evidence suggests that Tucker was not a con artist, he was just naive. The Torpedo had some innovative features. It had a 3rd headlight known as the “cyclops eye” which could turn with the steering wheel. 17 states banned cars from having more than 2 headlights, and for those states, a cover was fabricated. It has a rubberized suspension instead of coil springs. Tucker took that idea from the Indy 500, where he worked. The Torpedo had aircraft style door openings that cut into the roof for easier entry. But most notable was the advances in safety, 18 years before anyone had heard of Ralph Nader. It had a perimeter frame and a roll bar integrated into the roof. It had a padded dashboard and an unobstructed space in front of the passenger so that he or she would have less chance of hitting anything. The windshield was shatter resistant and designed to pop out in a crash. And Tucker enthusiasts have gathered thousands of engineering documents showing that Tucker was serious.
The Tucker case really captured the public’s imagination. The 1988 movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and staring Jeff Bridges as Preston Tucker, renewed interest in the car. There are those who say the government was colluding with Detroit to squash this upstart, an idea the Tucker himself implied, but really the problem was a lack of money. If Tucker had managed to get the money needed to go into full production, there was no guarantee of success. Just look at the DeLorean DMC-12. I suspect the Torpedo would’ve been very expensive to produce and have been hopeless against the juggernaut of Cadillac. Also, that rear mounted engine could have been a source of oversteer trouble. But people prefer to believe conspiracy theories.
The Tucker was neither a miracle car that Detroit worked to snuff out or a scam operation. What it was was an interesting creation of postwar optimism by a man who was in way over his head.