Around 1961, the old Classic Motorbooks organization published “THE INDOMITABLE TIN GOOSE, the story of Tucker Corpoiration written by Charles Pearson who was head of the company’s public relations department. He talked about the various opinions and feelings of not only corporate executives but lower eschelon management as well as months went by, cash was running out and the company still hadn’t finalized a manual transmission (let alone an automatic) for the company to have Borg-Warner to produce so the company could move forward on starting production for retail sale (rather than prototypes for display and test). At the time the government siezed the company books, it had around 10 million dollars on the books, but 7 million was in the form of promissory notes from dealers & distributors which were not redeemable until they got new cars. At around 1,000,000 a month for just rent payable to the RFC, the company was for all intents and purposes broke without production cars to sell. No surprise. By the time Tucker Corporation’s prospectus was completed in 1947, it was clear that at least 53 million dollars would be needed to get the business going and cars on the road; the sale of stock raised less than 17 million dollars after commissions. The prospectus itself (and I have a copy of the original document) states the company would need to raise no more than 26 million dollars to have cars on the road.
When an Associated Press reporter interviewed Francis Ford Coppola when the movie TUCKER came out, the reporter was told if the real story about what happened to Tucker Corporation was told, nobody would want to see the movie.
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