1948 Tucker Torpedo

"You have just been passed by a Tucker Torpedo."

   After World War II, in the late 1940's, my father and grandfather were driving back to Houston from Richmond, Texas on a two lane country road.  Acccording to my father, my grandfather liked to drive very fast.  On this occasion, with my father in in the front passenger seat, my grandfather was doing just that. 

   Suddenly and from out of nowhere, they were passed by another car traveling extremely fast.  The car then slowed down right in front of them and a neon light lit up a sign in the back windo that said, "You have just been passed by a Tucker Torpedo."  The car in front of them then excellerated again and even though my grandfather tried to keep up with the so-called "Tucker Torpedo," it, as they say, left them in the dust.

   A few miles ahead the driver of the Tucker Torpedo stopped at a roadside store to buy something.  My grandfather, who by then had to own such an amazing machine made the driver tell him all about it.  The man was selling franchises for Tucker automobile dealerships and was traveling around the Gulf Coast showing auto dealers the Tucker Torpedo he was driving.  As you can see from the pictures, the Tucker Torpedo was a maginificent machine.  my grandfther even tried to buy the man's demo Tucker Torpedo for an outrageous amount of cash.  The man said he could'nt sell the car.  My grandfather filled out an appliction for a dealership on the spot.

   The big three auto makers: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler which had been so busy during the war supplying tanks and other armaments had very little to offer in the way of new automobile designs after the war.  Most what they were offering were old pre-war models and features.  The Tucker Torpedo had extraordianry "Buck Rogers" futuristic styling and enough chrome to make a couple of Cadillacs jealous.  And of course it had tremendous horsepower compared to the competition.

   As was made very clear in the movie Tucker, the big three auto makers crushed Preston Tucker, the Tucker automobile company and the Tucker Torpedo. The photos below were taken at Space Center Houston in 2009.  This Tucker Torpedo, one of the original demo cars, was on loan from the O'Quinn Classic Car Collection.

The Tucker Torpedo

A True American Classic