Preston Tucker

His father was a railroad engineer named Shirl Harvey Tucker (1880-1907), and his mother was Lucille Caroline (née Preston) Tucker (1881-1960).

He grew up outside Detroit in the suburb of Lincoln Park, Michigan.

Tucker was raised by his mother, a teacher, after his father died of appendicitis when Preston was three or four years old.

First learning to drive at age 11, Tucker was obsessed with automobiles from an early age.

At age 16, Preston Tucker began purchasing late model automobiles, repairing and refurbishing them to sell for a profit.

He attended the Cass Technical High School in Detroit, but he quit school and landed a job as an office boy for the Cadillac Motor Company, where he used roller skates to make his rounds more efficiently.

Preston Thomas Tucker (21 September 1903 – 26 December 1956) was an American automobile entrepreneur who developed the innovative Tucker 48 sedan, initially nicknamed the "Tucker Torpedo", an automobile which introduced many features that have since become widely used in modern cars.

Preston Tucker was born on September 21, 1903, on a peppermint farm near Capac, Michigan.

In 1922, young Tucker joined the Lincoln Park Police Department against the pleas of his mother, his interest stirred by his desire to drive and ride the fast, high-performance police cars and motorcycles.

His mother had him removed from the LPPD, pointing out to police officials that at 19, he was below the department's minimum required age.

Tucker and his new wife, Vera (married in 1923 at 20), then took over a six-month lease on a gas station near Lincoln Park, running the station together.

Vera would run the station during the day while Preston worked on the Ford Motor Company assembly line.

After the lease ran out, Tucker quit Ford and returned to the LPPD, but in his first winter back he was banned from driving police vehicles after using a blowtorch to cut a hole in the dashboard of a cruiser to allow engine heat to warm the cabin.

During the last couple of months at the gas station, Tucker began selling Studebaker cars on the side.

He met an automobile salesman, Michael Dulian, who later became sales manager for the Tucker Corporation.

Dulian hired Tucker as a car salesman at his Detroit dealership.

Tucker did very well, but the dealership was a long drive from his Lincoln Park home and so Tucker quit and briefly returned to the LPPD for the last time.

A few months later, Dulian, still impressed with Tucker's immediate success as a salesman, invited Tucker to move south with him to Memphis, Tennessee, to work as a sales manager.

Dulian was transferred a couple of years later, but Tucker stayed in Memphis and was a salesman for Ivor Schmidt (Stutz) and John T. Fisher Motor Company (Chrysler), where he became general sales manager.

While managing Chrysler sales in Memphis, Tucker made a connection with Pierce-Arrow.

During the early 1930s, Tucker began an annual one-month trek to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Having a heavy interest in the race cars and their designers, Tucker met Harry Miller, maker of more Indianapolis 500-winning engines than any other during this period.

Tucker moved to Indianapolis to be closer to the racing car development scene and worked as the transportation manager for a beer distributor, overseeing the fleet of delivery trucks for the company.

In 1933, Tucker moved to Buffalo, New York, and became regional sales manager for Pierce-Arrow automobiles, but after only two years, he moved back to Detroit and worked as a Dodge salesman for Cass Motor Sales.

A better engineer than businessman, Miller declared bankruptcy in 1933 and was looking for new opportunities.

Tucker persuaded Miller to join him in building race cars, and they formed "Miller and Tucker, Inc."

in 1935.

The company's first job was building 10 souped-up Ford V-8 racers for Henry Ford.

However, the time to develop and test the cars was insufficient, and the steering boxes on all entrants overheated and locked up, causing them to drop out of the race.

In late 1937, while recovering in an Indianapolis hospital from an appendectomy, Tucker was reading the news and, learning of looming war in Europe, he got the idea of developing a high-speed armored combat vehicle.

Tucker's outgoing personality and his involvement at Indianapolis made him well known in the automotive industry by 1939.

In 1939, Tucker moved his family back to Michigan and bought a house and property in Ypsilanti.

He remodeled an old barn on his property and began and operated

a machine shop called the Ypsilanti Machine and Tool Company, planning to use the facility to develop various automotive products.

Miller and Tucker, Inc. continued race car development and various other ventures until Miller's death in 1943.

Tucker was close friends with Miller and even helped Miller's widow pay for her husband's funeral costs.

While working with Miller, Tucker met the Chevrolet brothers and chief mechanic/engineer John Eddie Offutt, who would later help Tucker develop and build the first prototype of the Tucker 48.

The design was later perfected by privateers, with examples running at Indy through 1948.

Production of the Tucker '48 was shut down on 3 March 1949 amid scandal and controversial accusations of stock fraud, of which Tucker was eventually acquitted.

The 1988 movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream is based on Tucker's spirit and the saga surrounding the car's production.