The Tucker That Time Forgot

Thanks to Susie Bright...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/automobiles/collectibles/26tucker.html

Collecting
The Tucker That Time Forgot
Ian Mullarney for The New York Times

This story can have many different endings. Some of the plucky startups, like Ferrari and Honda, endure, and their cars become the stuff of legend. Many more — Bricklin and DeLorean, for example — drop out of sight before gaining a commercial foothold.

Among the failures is one of the most fascinating chapters of American automotive history, the story of Preston Tucker and his attempt to break into a market dominated by Detroit’s Big Three in the years after World War II.

Though the Tucker had long been out of the public eye, interest in the against-the-grain entrepreneur who built it was resurrected by a 1988 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” depicted Tucker’s enterprise crushed by the combined power of the federal government and the business interests aligned against him.

Now the famously controversial marque is about to get another turn in the spotlight, with the completion of a Tucker convertible in Wisconsin that some enthusiasts have said was a secret prototype for a planned new model.

While much of the Tucker saga is steeped in myth and intrigue, a great deal is known about the 1948 models Tucker actually produced: one hand-built prototype, known as the Tin Goose, and 35 of the sleek Tucker 48 sedans, best remembered for their distinctive third headlight in the center of the front end that was designed to swivel with the steering.

During the 1950s, 16 more of the cars were assembled from leftover parts. These later vehicles, built using factory designs and specifications, are widely accepted as the genuine article, barely less sought-after than any of the originals. All told, 46 of the Tucker four-door sedans are believed to remain.

Surviving Tuckers are worth amounts approaching, and in some cases, exceeding $1 million.

Over the years, there had been whispers here and there, a few mentions in books and articles, about a mysterious convertible that Tucker and his crew had started working on in the days before he was forced to shut down operations in 1949.

But that’s all they were, just tantalizing hints. Few people knowledgeable about Tucker’s history took the stories seriously.

The widespread doubt added to the surprise that Justin Cole, a classic car restorer in Madison, Wis., felt at a car show last September when a collector mentioned to him a pending deal involving a Tucker convertible.

In this complex swap, the collector, Allan Reinert of Burlington, Wis., was to transfer the convertible Tucker to another collector in return for cars and cash. A 1957 Corvette that Mr. Cole was trying to sell was part of the transaction. The man who wanted the Tucker would be sending Mr. Cole a check for the Corvette, which Mr. Cole would then deliver to Mr. Reinert as partial payment for the Tucker convertible.

“I had never heard of a convertible Tucker,” Mr. Cole said, “so I asked him to tell me more about it, and the more he went into the details, the more he caught my attention — things like the correct Franklin engine and Cord transmission, and a frame made of the thickest steel of any Tucker in existence.

“I wanted to believe what he was telling me, but it was very hard to believe. So I went out to Allen’s place and looked into his garage. I saw what I needed to see.”

Significantly, there were only two doors, not the four that all the other Tuckers had, and the doors were longer than those of Tucker sedans. Moreover, Mr. Cole said, the frame had been fabricated of much thicker steel than other frames, and it was reinforced with tubular steel welded inside the box assembly. Many of the parts were stamped with the number 57.

When a check for the Corvette still hadn’t arrived after several days, Mr. Reinert decided to sell the convertible to Mr. Cole instead of to his earlier customer. He said he had wanted $750,000 for the frame and two trailer loads of parts, but agreed to sell it for a total of $475,000, which included the value of the ’57 Corvette, a ’54 Corvette and a 2003 Ford Thunderbird. Mr. Cole estimated the combined values of those three cars at around $240,000.

Since then, Mr. Cole and his crew have put about 1,500 hours into restoration of the car, working with the parts that came from Mr. Reinert. A few sheet-metal panels at the rear of the body, including the decklid and a filler panel, had to be fabricated.

Mr. Cole said he anticipated finishing the car in August and showing the car on Sept. 13 at the Fairfield County Concours d’Élégance in Westport, Conn.

The closer his shop, Benchmark Classics, gets to completing the restoration, the louder the chorus of doubters becomes, with some of the most vocal objections being raised on the forum of the Tucker Automobile Club of America’s Web site, tuckerclub.org. Many participants in that forum say they believe that Preston Tucker never intended to produce a convertible and that Mr. Cole is engaging in an elaborate hoax.

Both Mr. Cole and Mr. Reinert say they are surprised at the vehemence of the objections. They say they have eye-witness accounts, some in the form of affidavits that have been posted on a Web site created for the convertible project at tuckerconvertible.com, from people who had seen the drawings, reinforced frame, factory number stampings — and the car being prepared as a convertible — long before Mr. Reinert acquired it.

One such person, John Walczak, a 60-year-old retired banker from Woodstock, Ill., said he had seen the uncompleted car as a convertible in a Milwaukee machine shop in 1971 or 1972. Also, he said, he saw full-scale engineering drawings — bearing the stamp of the Tucker Corporation — of the car as a convertible.

Jerry Renner, now the owner of a motorcycle shop in Arbor Vitae, Wis., said that Mr. Reinert had brought the frame and body parts for restoration help in the late 1980s. Mr. Renner added that while the project was in his shop, he had been visited by two former Tucker employees who recognized it as an experimental convertible begun in the Tucker factory months before it closed.

Mr. Cole said that his car was no different in authenticity from any of the 16 Tuckers built from leftover parts after the factory closed, and that it should be seen as the legitimately final chapter in the strange story of Preston Tucker’s attempt to create a competing automobile brand in the United States.

“In a way, I am a little like Preston Tucker himself,” Mr. Cole said. “It seems like everyone is against me, but I will not back down. I will finish this project.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the condition of the Tucker's frame when Justin Cole bought it. The frame had been restored and was not rusted.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 26, 2009, on page AU1 of the New York edition.