History Tucker Stock Car

[SuperFleye]

Hehe, I´m glad i didn't saw it and bought it

Originally Posted by axle

Superfleye,

I remember after the movie came out the Studebaker was for sale in the local Auto Trader.

[Unkl Ian]

There was supposed to be someone else,
besides IDA, making 'glas Tucker bodies.
---
Jimmy Flintstone makes a resin "Triclops",
based on an Ed Newton rendering of a Tucker.
---
Joe Sulpy's restored #51.
http://joesulpys.com/galleries/featu...kergallery.htm
He said they used a cut down Pinto windshield, for the back glass.

[Zapato]

I remember Carps photoshopping one years ago several versions, really stirred things up with those. Might have been over on the old Rodders Roundtable. Looked pretty good cleaned up. IMHO tuckers are interesting to look at but not what I consider a clean design. More than a bit gaudy much like Studebakers also were at that time.

[monsterflake]

Originally Posted by 50mercfan

another of the tucker board members is the guy who has 1023 buried under his garage. he also has another tucker.
i can't remember his reasoning for burying 1023 other than it was totally wasted and had no usable parts. still seems weird though.

somebody needs to dig that up, have you seen what kind of cars get saved around here? all some of these guys need are the shadow that the car cast on the ground....

[alchemy]

Just to relate Tuckers to actual Hot Rods:

Here's a couple scans of Preston Tucker Jr.'s correspondense, and later a classified ad in Hot Rod Magazine from 1948 - 1949 (I forget the actual issues, I scanned these a couple years ago).

It seems Preston Jr. was building a hot rod '32 roadster. He was building up a hot flathead, and also wanted to know the correct way to get his Milan (now more commonly known as Kinmont) brakes on the '32 spindles. A year or so later he was selling the car. Was it sold because of Dad's business troubles? Where is it now?


.

[Tuckerfan]

Originally Posted by Unkl Ian

There was supposed to be someone else,
besides IDA, making 'glas Tucker bodies.
---
Jimmy Flintstone makes a resin "Triclops",
based on an Ed Newton rendering of a Tucker.
---
Joe Sulpy's restored #51.
http://joesulpys.com/galleries/featu...kergallery.htm
He said they used a cut down Pinto windshield, for the back glass.

Chick DeLorenzo, who owns Tucker 1051 was selling the fiberglass bodies. Newton's Tucker hotrod illustration can be seen here.

Originally Posted by monsterflake

somebody needs to dig that up, have you seen what kind of cars get saved around here? all some of these guys need are the shadow that the car cast on the ground....

Not going to be a lot to work with, I'm afraid, as here's a pic of the car before it went into the ground.



There is, however, a wrecked Tucker stuck in a barn in Washington state. Sadly, nobody who knows where it is, is willing to say. There's also a few incomplete bodies out there. Again, however, the folks who know where these are, aren't talking.

[Tony]

What the hell was that car in in that pic?
Sad to see the bit's and pieces just sitting like that..
Pretty much the same thing as a treasured hotrod rotting away that no one can obtain...
Although it really amazes me how someone could think the remains of a Tucker would be better off rotting away than be in the hands of someone how could possibly bring another back to life...with so few made it's such a waste.

[Motorsports One]

Originally Posted by WQ59B

The source of the photo states the car was at the Grand National Circuit Championship race in Rochester NY on 07-09-1950, and the track was a dirt track at the Monroe Cty Fairgrounds, south of Rochester. The Tucker was 'brought in to run a one-lap feature against the winner, but broke an axle and didn't complete the lap'.

A Tucker was also supposedly at the Poor Man's 500 at the Canfield Motor Speedway on the same day as that years' Indy 500- where it qualified but also broke an axle on lap 1.

Greg Fielden's Forty Years of Stock Car Racing brings some light to this topic.

The details mentioned above regarding the race at Monroe County Fairgrounds are all correct, except for the date. The race was held on July 2 and the results don't include a Tucker.

As far as the Canfield Motor Speedway race is concerned, the Tucker was in that race and didn't complete the first lap. The race was held on May 30, 1950 and here's a quote from Fielden's book. "Joe Merola was on hand with a new radically designed 1948 Tucker Torpedo, one of the most controversial and advanced automobiles ever to hit the market. The car conked out before Merola was able to complete a lap."

[Villlage Idiot]

I was just thinking about how rare a production run of 52 or 48 (whatever the actual number) cars is. My parents were married in September 1948 and traveled by train to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon. My father who has since passed away told me when I was a kid that he saw a Tucker parked on a street in Buffalo during that trip. That was the one and only Tucker he ever saw. That doesn't say a lot for the old honeymoon when my old man's best memory of it was a car!! I've been around cars a long time and I've never seen a Tucker in person.

[SuperFleye]

Are you sure about this, over the years there have been several stories about people finding lost tuckers, but in all of the cases it just turns out to be a studebaker or a shoebox ford with an accessory light mounted where the grille bullet used to be.

Originally Posted by hotrodarchaeologist

My father's friend and boss, Pete, crushed a Tucker back in the 50's. He owned a junkyard in Mexico, Maine, and the Tucker he crushed was just a "funny looking car with a light in the middle of the grille" to him. Not too long ago my dad flipped the page on a classic car calender to reveal a Tucker and Pete said something to the effect of "oh, that's what that was"...

[bobj49f2]

........

[oddrodgarage]

Originally Posted by bobj49f2

........

cool

[bonesy]

Did not race = the man still keeping Tucker down.

[WQ59B]

Just want to throw this out there. Nearly every source out there lists the Tucker weight as 4235, but this was the weight of the 'lead sled' Tin Goose prototype.

For comparison: a '48 Roadmaster 4-dr sedan - at nearly the same dimensions- weighs 4160, with a cast-iron straight 8, an iron dynaflow with gallons of trans fluid and an enclosed driveshaft, whereas the Tucker has an aluminum flat 6 and a transaxle.

'Production' Tuckers weigh around 3800 lbs, and this was confirmed to me by one of the regular Tucker Club members. I sure would like to see this get corrected in print at some point in the future...

[66Newport]

I'm about overdue for my "barn-find", and I'd like it to be a Tucker! Always been one of my dream cars[/quote]

Isn't it a dream of all of us?

[hoodlumsaint]

looks like ol' preston himself standing there with the tie ! [probabably looking out for the media cameras]

[HOTRODPRIMER]

Mario Anderetti has driven a Tucker,



This is a photo of the Tucker Indy car,,with Al Miller at the wheel



and a photo of the man behind the dream,,,Posing as SuperMan. HRP

[Toner283]

Check out the 2 door Tucker convertible. The guy who owns it claims it is a factory prototype but the guys on the tucker board are convinced he is full of crap & it is a custom phantom that is modified from one of the known cars. whoever you believe it is still pretty cool. IMO the proportions are pretty much dead on.

http://tuckerconvertible.com/index

Discussions about the truth/lies behind the convertible.

http://www.tuckerclub.org/bbs3/viewf...0a891e144179f5

[kwoodyh]

Originally Posted by monsterflake

from the TACA site, referring to the burned car...

Notes: Remains of car after fire were buried under the garage of a TACA founder.

what's the point of that?

Tucker VooDoo maybe?

[porknbeaner]

Originally Posted by Ryan

The fellas over at Hemmings recently uncovered the fascinating photo above. Your eyes aren’t deceiving - that’s an honest-to-goodness Tucker Torpedo all dressed up to go racing. They seem to think the photo was taken in 1950 at Canfield Speedway...

To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.

Well who woulda thought.

Looks like it might have been more at home on La Carrera Panamercana.

Whatever its a pretty cool pic and well worth some conjecture.
I don't know when they started the rule but back when I was younger you had to sell a certain amount of a car body to the public in order to run it in a sanctioned race. I don't think they ever built enough Tuckers to satisfy the rule.