Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow

A dramatic story of automotive innovation and government persecution In the wake of World War II, the U.S. automobile industry was fully unprepared to meet the growing demands of the public, for whom they had not made any cars for years. In stepped Preston Tucker, a salesman extraordinaire who annou [...]
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A dramatic story of automotive innovation and government persecution In the wake of World War II, the U.S. automobile industry was fully unprepared to meet the growing demands of the public, for whom they had not made any cars for years. In stepped Preston Tucker, a salesman extraordinaire who announced the building of a revolutionary new car: the Tucker '48, the first car in almost a decade to be built fresh from the ground up. Tucker's car, which would include ingenious advances in design and engineering that other car companies could not match, captured the interest of the public, and automakers in Detroit took notice. Soon, the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, headed by a former Detroit man, began investigating Tucker, and when a leaked report indicated that Tucker was going to be indicted for a scheme of massive fraud, his stock crashed and America came to believe that he was nothing but a huckster. After a lengthy trial, Tucker was eventually exonerated, but not before he and his company were left with nothing. Here, author Steve Lehto tackles Tucker's amazing story, relying on a huge trove of documents that has been used by no other writer to date.It is the first comprehensive, authoritative account of Tucker's magnificent car and his battles with the government. And in this book, Lehto finally answers the question automobile aficionados have wondered about for decades: exactly how and why the production of such an innovative car was killed.