Could Tucker Automotive succeed?

[Deleted member 6086]

Preston Tucker's 1948 Sedan was literally decades ahead of its time. It included four-wheel disc brakes, independent suspension, safety glass, standard seat belts and fuel injection. Only fifty were ever made, and many blame the Big 3 for conspiring to eliminate it.

Could Tucker succeed in launching a new car company to rival GM, Ford and Chrysler?

 

[tallwingedgoat]

The odds were not good.

Much more likely to succeed was Kaiser Motors. This wasn't started by a salesman, but was a partnership between the tycoon responsible for the Victory Ships and a GM senior exec. Still it failed.

 

[1940LaSalle]

A minor point: Joe Frazer was an executive with by-then-defunct Graham, which produced its last cars for the '41 model year. These beauties used the old Cord Beverly/Westchester body dies jointly with Hupmobile. But I digress.

There were many-my late father included-who were absolutely convinced Preston Tucker was dishonest. He was, in fact, accused and later exonerated but by then the damage was done. It seems to me (my own interpretation!) that the big boys didn't see him as one of their own, and wanted no challenges from an outsider. Kaiser, on the other hand, was a major magnate and he had Joe Frazer, a Detroit insider as his partner, so they were judged to be more or less members of the club.

I suspect that had the legal and financial wolfpacks not converged on Tucker, he could have had a modest run at success--say, lasting until the Korean War impact began to be felt. There would have been something of an attempt to save the marque (perhaps a merger with Kaiser-Frazer?) and perhaps survival through the '52 or '53 model year. But after that, time was running out for the postwar independents overall, so it's unlikely to me that the marque could have survived much longer.

 

[Hyperbolus]

Kaiser had exponentially more resources and still failed: even with the shipbuilding magnate's deep pockets, they could not afford both a "clean sheet" chassis and a V8 design.
As for mergers among the independent automakers, it would have done little to achieve economies of scale (a bit like OTL British Leyland, no?). Studebaker, for ex. was the largest "independent" of the day but was burdened by outdated, inefficient, labor-intensive factories.
As for the Tucker itself, it was very expensive (helicopter engine IIRC). The sophisticated design would have held down the profit margin and dividends paid investors even had more cars had been built.

 

[TheMann]

I can see Tucker only surviving as part of somebody else. As others have pointed out, the major independents all gathered together into American Motors because of the problems competing with the Big 3. If Tucker is part of an organized merger of the small makers (with Nash-Kelvinator, Kaiser and Hudson), then it would likely survive, and the problems with the marketing ability of the Big 3 was obvious even in 1948.

Tucker's design was too expensive and complex to work in the marketplace, but if Tucker had been part of such a conglomerate and been able to combine the Tucker's ideas with the cars of the other makers, they would look fairly good, especially since the Big 3 all lapsed into technological complacency by the mid 1960s.

 

[TheMann]

Studebaker, for ex. was the largest "independent" of the day but was burdened by outdated, inefficient, labor-intensive factories.

Studebaker had a car that looked very much like the Mustang on the drawing board in the early 1960s, but the money problems stopped it from happening. If its Studebaker who gets the first pony car out there (and sells hundreds of thousands in the space of 18 months as Ford did), then they might also make it.

 

[NothingNow]

Tucker's design was too expensive and complex to work in the marketplace, but if Tucker had been part of such a conglomerate and been able to combine the Tucker's ideas with the cars of the other makers, they would look fairly good, especially since the Big 3 all lapsed into technological complacency by the mid 1960s.

Definitely, but Tucker's main problem is getting the Vehicles to market in the first place. But, the demand was there, and there was a massive amount of intrest in the vehicles. Dodge the investigation that ultimately sunk the company, and you might have a winner, even if it gets gobbled up by someone in a massive bidding war.

 

[tallwingedgoat]

What Henry Kaiser said about the failure of Kaiser-Frazer:

We were not surprised that we had to toss $50 million into the automotive pool, we were surprised that it disappeared without a ripple.

 

[phx1138]

Could Tucker succeed in launching a new car company to rival GM, Ford and Chrysler?

No. To beat the Big 3 in '48, you needed to be the Big 3. You needed to be Stude, Packard, or Hudson, with better management & (probably) more money.

Had the '48 Torpedo been built at Hudson, it might've been a big success. It would certainly have avoided the problems of no dealers & Tucker's lunatic engineering decisions (converting an aircooled engine to watercooled? electromagnetic transmission, which had been a bad idea when Cord tried it in '36 & still hadn't been debugged). Not to mention the bad decision to buy the white elephant Willow Run plant for building cars, when it was designed for building B-24s. The Torpedo looked great, & had a chance of being a real customizer's icon, like the '49 Merc was.

Could Hudson have sold enough to stay afloat? IDK. Tucker had no chance alone.

If its Studebaker who gets the first pony car out there (and sells hundreds of thousands in the space of 18 months as Ford did), then they might also make it.

I very much doubt it. Stude managment was pretty awful. Just for a start, they lied to Nash about the state of the business when Nash was taking them over.

Studebaker had a car that looked very much like the Mustang on the drawing board in the early 1960s

I'd love to know more about this one.