Jeff Bridges was a fantastic choice to play Preston Tucker, a man who I honestly couldn’t tell from the movie if he was a con-man at all or just a really hopeful person that always had a thought on how to movie forward, regardless of the stumbling blocks put in front of him. Of course, it turns out that the incumbent car manufacturers were working day and night to prevent his success, even going as far as to pull him in front of a court to determine if he was fraudulently selling shares of a company that was nothing more than a pipedream. This is a situation that’s about as American as apple pie, but this example wasn’t one that I knew, but happy to have learned about.
A sidenote, one of the 50 Tucker 48s that were made lives in the same town I do at the Tallahassee Auto Museum, a fantastic visit for anyone passing through town and wanted to see fabulous cars (and pocket knives) all while supporting an absolutely bonkers MAGA guy.
He was legit, he was one of those people that was great at ideas but shit at business and he got royally fucked over for it.
About the Tucker cars, I used to know the guy who owned what was known as the 51st Tucker, he bought up a shitton of parts at the factory auction and built his own from them, he had everything except one of the taillight lenses that he had to have custom molded.
He also had three spare engine/transmissions for it and steadfastly refused to sell one of them to me… the bastard.
Tiki, did you catch how Tucker didn’t get to build the car that he actually wanted to build? He had to settle for what he could accomplish. And Tucker’s version of the Jeep was way better than the Jeep we ended up with. The military said that it was too fast! WTF
I did, though that “too fast” thing seems to be a self reported issue and not an official statement from the US army