Tucker kit? YES!

[Rob Hall]

There have been diecast Tesla roadsters, and there are diecast Tesla Model S coming I've read..

[Tom Geiger]

Franklin Mint made a 1/24 diecast, Yatming made a 1/18 and a 1/43 diecast and they all sold well. They certainly should be able to sell a plastic kit.

Add in a Modelhaus resin kit that was mastered by George Ellis from my club. All of these are further nails in the coffin of a Tucker kit idea. A lot of the demand for that car has been satisfied by diecast and resin already. Then again, crazy things have happened in the past few years. I wouldn't complain at all if some strange new company from Latvia suddenly showed up with a full detail Tucker kit. Then the topic would be complaining that the kit cost over $30

A while back someone was pitching a new kit idea to me. I told them that the specific car was already made by Danbury Mint and there was a Modelhaus resin too. He told me I didn't understand... he wanted someone to come out with a plastic kit so he could get one at Hobby Lobby with his 40% off coupon! So.... some company should invest a few hundred thousand so you can get the kit on the cheap for $20???

Edited May 11, 2015 by Tom Geiger

[Ace-Garageguy]

I have to wonder if Moebius hadn't already made a success of the Hudson offerings, and if this thread was about a Hudson kit rather than a Tucker kit, how many insider expert naysayers would be preaching to us all that it would be a non-seller impossible-to-make-the-numbers failure.

Just a thought.

I mean, all the insider industry experts knew airplanes could never be a commercial success...much less even fly. Ummm...'til somebody made it happen.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Ace-Garageguy

[Tom Geiger]

And since Teslas came up... here's me with a couple of cars. We had dinner with the Tesla side of the family the other evening and they brought both specimens. The silver Model S is my cousin's car. It's about a year old at this point and I remember posting to the board about my experience in driving it. The red Model S is my uncle's car and is brand new. This is a new all wheel drive version. I got to drive it, and it has neck snapping acceleration! It's a bit faster than the original car. The silver car is registered in PA (no front plate) and the plate reads "Tesla 85" where my uncle lives in Maryland and his plate simply reads E-LATED.

[Jon Cole]

Trumpeter. The "Palmer Kits" of todays kit manufacturers. And when a Tucker kit finally comes along, (and it will) I hope it's offered by designers, engineers, tool makers, and artisans that can and will produce a knockout.
Again, MOEBIUS! I'm looking at you!!!

[Jon Cole]

There really is something about that Tesla. I can spot them coming up the street, blocks away. Must be something to do with that funky headlight signature. And Tom, you are a fortunate man to experience them.

[Luc Janssens]

There really is something about that Tesla. I can spot them coming up the street, blocks away. Must be something to do with that funky headlight signature. And Tom, you are a fortunate man to experience them.

Indeed...in the past, 'till the 90s or so, I pretty much knew every new vehicle on the road....now I have to look at the name plate, one exception is the Tesla, I can spot them from a mile away, don't know what it is, cuz never realy read current auto magazines.

Only have a subscription of Hemming's Muscle Machines, since day one...

[johnbuzzed]

No. Can't be done. Because somebody said so, that's why. If you were "inside", you would understand.

jb

And once, people were unable to fly, much less travel to the Moon.

[johnbuzzed]

I won't name names, but I have it from a very reliable industry insider source that at one point the decision had been made to produce a styrene Tucker kit. But the kit never was put into production due to other, unrelated circumstances at the company. Has it not been for those other circumstances that had a big effect on the company, we would have a Tucker kit today.

So the idea of a Tucker kit isn't as crazy as some of you guys think.

Might that have been AM..., uhh T?

[Dave Van]

I won't name names, but I have it from a very reliable industry insider source that at one point the decision had been made to produce a styrene Tucker kit. But the kit never was put into production due to other, unrelated circumstances at the company. Has it not been for those other circumstances that had a big effect on the company, we would have a Tucker kit today.

So the idea of a Tucker kit isn't as crazy as some of you guys think.

Been told the same story by someone who was there........if only it had happened.

I fully buy into the Lucas/Ford-Copala version of the Tucker story. Both men own Tuckers and have done much research on the car/man/company.

KILLED by the big 3 out of pure fear.

I have the Danbury and Modelhaus versions.......want a plastic kit.....even a curbside.

But not holding breath......

[Dave Van]

On the Moebius and Hudson thing.......

There is cut in stone logic why we have Hudson's from Moebius.........

[Harry P.]

I fully buy into the Lucas/Ford-Copala version of the Tucker story. Both men own Tuckers and have done much research on the car/man/company.

KILLED by the big 3 out of pure fear.

You don't even have to buy into the Lucas-Coppola version of the story... the details of the case against Tucker and the trial are a matter of public record. And it wasn't just Sen. Homer Ferguson of Michigan running interference for his local "Big Three." The Big Three also put the squeeze on their steel suppliers and "suggested" that they might want to make it hard for the Tucker Corp. to buy steel. So Tucker's production was affected by their inability to get enough steel to stamp out enough body panels. It was a case of the little guy going against the big boys... and the big boys did not like the competition... so they killed it.

BTW... if any of you out there have never seen the move "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," do yourself a favor and see it! No car guy can go through life not having seen this movie. Jeff Bridges is terrific as Preston Tucker.

[jbwelda]

See post #3 for the explanation.

and you thought I was being sarcastic.

jb

[Dave Van]

You don't even have to buy into the Lucas-Coppola version of the story... the details of the case against Tucker and the trial are a matter of public record. And it wasn't just Sen. Homer Ferguson of Michigan running interference for his local "Big Three." The Big Three also put the squeeze on their steel suppliers and "suggested" that they might want to make it hard for the Tucker Corp. to buy steel. So Tucker's production was affected by their inability to get enough steel to stamp out enough body panels. It was a case of the little guy going against the big boys... and the big boys did not like the competition... so they killed it.

BTW... if any of you out there have never seen the move "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," do yourself a favor and see it! No car guy can go through life not having seen this movie. Jeff Bridges is terrific as Preston Tucker.

Some folks try to say the Tucker fans twisted facts to make a better story......I don't think they had to do anything......

Agreed....a HAVE TO SEE film. Own a copy in fact.

[Ace-Garageguy]

First time I saw the movie, even though I knew the story and the eventual outcome, I got so caught up in the whole idea of the underdog battling the unfair-playing big guys, I found myself irrationally rooting for Bridges / Tucker, hoping somehow he'd win...even though, as I said, I already knew the ending. Pretty bizarre effect it had on me.

You really have to wonder about the SOBs who killed it too. I mean, the "big 3" had such a lock on the US car industry, it's doubtful Tucker would ever have made a significant dent in their sales if they'd just left him alone to live his dream instead of crushing it. The guys responsible for shooting him down musta all been little nasty kids who got off pulling wings off of butterflies.

Greedy corporate unethical a-holes. Can't even let a little guy do something that's no threat whatsoever.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Ace-Garageguy

[lordairgtar]

Surprising they never really went after Kaiser. I guess him having his own steel mills and factories made it hard for the big three to attack him. He too was just an upstart car maker after the war.

[Harry P.]

I think the difference was that Kaiser was already a well-established and respected ship builder during WWII; they weren't the "new kid on the block" the way Tucker was. And like you said, Kaiser also was a steel maker, so the Big Three couldn't do anything to them even if they wanted to. Kaiser was a huge outfit with interests in several areas of industry. But Tucker was a different case–a new car company just getting started in the post-war years, trying to sell a modern, all-new car with features the Big Three didn't offer. I agree that Tucker would probably not have been a threat to the Big Three's sales, but apparently they felt the Tucker Corp. was a big enough threat to do like Barney Fife always said... "nip it in the bud."

[charlie8575]

BTW... if any of you out there have never seen the move "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," do yourself a favor and see it! No car guy can go through life not having seen this movie. Jeff Bridges is terrific as Preston Tucker.

Agreed. One of my favorite movies.

When I was teaching high school, I showed this movie very frequently, to underline the importance of innovation, ideas, entrepreneurship and why government interference, especially through influence peddling, in the economy can be so dangerous.

Nearly every kid that ever saw that movie with me got the message loud and clear, especially after dealing with my questions and discussions.

Charlie Larkin

[Jon Cole]

Hmmm.... 

[Art Anderson]

I think the difference was that Kaiser was already a well-established and respected ship builder during WWII; they weren't the "new kid on the block" the way Tucker was. And like you said, Kaiser also was a steel maker, so the Big Three couldn't do anything to them even if they wanted to. Kaiser was a huge outfit with interests in several areas of industry. But Tucker was a different case–a new car company just getting started in the post-war years, trying to sell a modern, all-new car with features the Big Three didn't offer. I agree that Tucker would probably not have been a threat to the Big Three's sales, but apparently they felt the Tucker Corp. was a big enough threat to do like Barney Fife always said... "nip it in the bud."

Having read a couple of books on the story of Tucker, both Preston Tucker, and the car, a few things stand out:  For starters (and importantly, I think) Preston Tucker, by 1946, had a considerable reputation as being more than a bit of a huckster.  He first seemed to appear on the automotive scene in the early 1930's, and for the 1935 Indianapolis 500 Mile race, recruited the famed, but vastly reduced-in-circumstances, the legendary Harry Armenius Miller, who headed up the company responsible for so many fabulous 122 and 91 cid race cars of the 1920's, to design a new car, front drive, using modified (read that hopped up) Ford V8 engines.  He then managed, through Edsel Ford, to convince Henry Ford to bankroll the project--which resulted in a team of 11 Miller-Ford front drive race cars for the 1935 "500".  They were a dismal failure, the only cars to make the race all went out with steering gear seizure, due to Miller's insistence that the small, very precisely (read that very tight internal clearances) built steering gears be mounted within an inch or so of the left hand exhaust header--they got so out as to boil the grease out of them, then seized up).  That experience soured Ford Motor Company and the Ford family on racing involvement for another 20 years, 29 years in the case of Indianapolis racing.  Henry Ford was so incensed that he had his company take possession of the Miller Fords, which got locked away, none of them reappearing until 1941, when the Winfield brothers Bud (carburetion expert) and Ed (camshaft design) managed to pry one loose for mounting their new Winfield Supercharged V8 in--that engine being renamed the Novi in 1946.

During WW-II, Tucker ran a contract machine shop in Ypsilanti MI, built up an armored car with an electric turret carrying a pair of machine guns, for which he made outlandish claims of ground speed, as well as the turret being the best ever designed.  The movie hints that the US Military used Tucker's turret in bombers, both USAAF and US Navy, but if one looks up the specifications for any US Military aircraft equipped with any sort of swiveling turret, nowhere does the Tucker turret come to be mentioned.

Following VJ Day, Preston Tucker became one of many who could readily see the huge market that existed for new cars--by then the average age of cars on American roads was an astonishing 15+ years, brought on mostly by the Great Depression (which while formally ending in 1933, had its effects on public confidence economically all the way out to about 1940 (when the US morphed into the "Arsenal of Democracy", then followed by 3 1/2 years of no new automobiles being produced, due to the total war effort.

Trouble was, by 1945, Preston Tucker didn't have the money to start up a new automobile company on his own, and was pretty much "persona non grata" in the financial industry--hence his feverish drive to promote his "ideas" to the general public at large.  And frankly, many of his sales pitches were the stuff of fraudsters, shysters, whether or not he was that himself--that's what raised a lot of eyebrows.  Instead of starting out relatively small (arguably a questionable venture at any rate), Tucker went way beyond what any other startup in the auto industry had ever done, from a cold beginning (by contrast, Henry Kaiser was a known entity, had an enviable record of successful ventures--from Hoover Dam to the building of hundreds of Liberty Ships and the shipyard they were built in, from scratch) to be a major automaker overnight.  It got to the point that he was selling dealerships in Tuckers before the first samples were even assembled--anyone wanting to become a Tucker dealer had to buy a boatload of Tucker accessories ahead of car production, and pay for them in cash (a local acquaintance of mine here inherited a 2 1/2 car garage full of that stuff (anyone want a radio with antenna for a Tucker perhaps?) when his father took a bath on those parts.

With all of this, it took only a second-rate muckraking columnist in New York City, Westbrook Pegler, and a Michigan senator who may or may not have had direct ties with any of the Big Three automakers, to derail the man's ambitions, and while he was absolved of any criminal wrong doing, it is pretty evident that Tucker Motors would not have survived the end of the postwar seller's market anyway--non of the surviving "independent" automakers did, save for American Motors the rest (Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, Kaiser-Frazer, Crosley and a half dozen or so mini car manufacturers were all gone from the US scene by the end of 1963.  How could Tucker have survived in the long run, as thinly capitalized as it was when for example, GM spent almost 10 times Tucker's capitalization just to restyle their 1949 car lines?

 

Art

[dartman]

 

Kinda sounds like one of my exes.

[Greg Myers]

No. Can't be done. Because somebody said so, that's why. If you were "inside", you would understand.

 

jb

Man, that is so funny it hurts.  Didn't read the rest of the thread yet, didn't think I had to seeing this very comprehensive answer, covers it all. Thanks jbwelda, great insight to the board. 

[Junkman]

Kids wouldn't buy Tucker kits. Let's do a '69 Charger instead.

[Guest]

Kids wouldn't buy Tucker kits. Let's do a '69 Charger instead.

they won't buy either.

[jbwelda]

this whole story as related by AA reminds me of the railroading of Honorable Marcus Garvey, one of Jamaicas national heroes, at the hands of the American political establishment. Typical smearing of perfectly great ideas by great men, by those small minded people with small ideas who manage to get themselves either elected or appointed to power and then look around for people to crucify to further their own ambitions.

jb