Tucker story on my blog...

[Walter Zoomie]

Gents:

Here's something you will probably enjoy.

http://walterzoomiesworld.blogspot.com/ ... ucker.html

My late father was a reporter/photog for the Indianapolis Star. He wrote this piece in 1974, and I have included it on my blog, along with some of his other work. I understand there may be some factual errors in it, as with the passing of time more facts become known....so bear with me, and Dad, and the piece. Dad did the best he could in that era before computers and the internet!

This took many hours to compile...typing, photo scanning and editing (and stealing..err...borrowing), researching... My eyes are bleeding and my back hurts!

I used the published article from the Indianapolis Star Magazine, which they edited the hell out of, and Dad's original copy, along with many more photos...some never seen before.....EVER!

Going through all this material, I found a sleeve of black and white negatives which my father took in 1974 when Al Unser and Mario Andretti took the Tucker for a spin. Al and Mario were trackside for Firestone tire testing, and had nothing better to do than thrash a classic collectible car!

I really hope you all enjoy this stuff.

[Tuckerfan1053]

Thanks, and welcome to the boards! I couldn't help but notice that some of the photos you posted were of very early incarnations of the Tucker 48. The second and third images were obviously heavily retouched by folks at the Tucker Corporation, and were taken before the metal front bumper had arrived. If you have the original photos, I hope that you'll pass them along to the Tucker Historical Collection Library.

[Walter Zoomie]

Interesting about the early Tucker and the bumper...
What is it about the bumper that leads you to believe they are "retouched?"
Did Tucker have to install a mock-up bumper (plastic, balsa wood, paper mache) because the real ones weren't manufactured at the time, and there was deadline of some sort...like an auto show, or an investigation...

Regarding the photos...I would be more than happy to send them scanned copies of anything they see and like on the blog. However, due to some issues I can't go into right now, I cannot give them the originals.

regards,

Paul Johnson

[Larry Clark]

Paul- Great job! I acquired an an original newspaper copy of your father's article some years ago. I have always considered his article to be one of the most informative post-era articles done about the Tucker car experience, especially the parts about the testing of the cars at the race track. You have made your father's work even more valuable with your inclusion of so many more pictures than could run in the original story. Your web blog story is now certainly one of the most valuable resources of Tucker information on the web. This had to take a LOT of work to do. Thanks from all of us Tucker nuts who thrive on this kind of thing.

Larry

[Walter Zoomie]

Thanks, Larry. It was a lot of work, but when I stop and think about all the leg work and investigating my dad had to do in those times before e-mail and computers...well...what I did pales by comparison.

Dad kept much of the snail-mail correspondence he had with some of his sources of the time. Some of the most interesting letters were from Offutt himself! (Dad interviewed Offutt in person, in Indianapolis I believe, probably sometime right before the 1974 Indy 500) For example, in a letter, Offutt corrected an error in Dad's original published piece...the part where Dad stated in the article that the 1948 Indy tests were performed with Firestone tires. Offutt pointed out that the tests were actually conducted with BF Goodrich tires...and who would know better than one of the actual test drivers?

One of the few edits I made on the blog, other than grammar and syntax, was this tire thing...

Anyhoo...glad you all liked the piece. I think my dad would be pretty proud of how I did it up...probably more like the way he would have liked to have seen it in the paper.

regards,

Paul A. Johnson

[Tuckerfan1053]

Interesting about the early Tucker and the bumper...
What is it about the bumper that leads you to believe they are "retouched?"
Did Tucker have to install a mock-up bumper (plastic, balsa wood, paper mache) because the real ones weren't manufactured at the time, and there was deadline of some sort...like an auto show, or an investigation...

The bumpers used in the photos are painted wood (I don't know why Tucker felt he had to get photos of the car out before the bumpers arrived), but if you look at the front end above the bumper, in the shot with Tucker putting luggage in the trunk, the coloration is flat, and not at all glossy like it should be. There's also no turn signal marker visible. Its not an uncommon thing, even way back then, for car companies to retouch their photos. I've seen photos of the 1955 Studebakers which were quite clearly photos of the '54 models that had been retouched (the '54 had very little chrome on the front, the '55 was almost entirely chrome).

[MD]

Paul,

Thank you for posting this... The article is a great read, and the photos are amazing! Excellent work! If you have any more photos from your Dad's archives, it would be great to see them also.

Tuckerfan1053, Photos #2 and #3 are of the Tin Goose prototype, which did indeed have a wood mock-up bumper early on, but even when the chrome bumper/grille was finally installed, it had slightly different styling and appearance to a "regular" Tucker bumper, and still does to this day. Also, the Tin Goose never had turn signals fitted to it's front fenders, and you will notice the rear doors are hinged from the center pillar, not "suicide" style like the pilot production cars. In some publicity shots, the Tin Goose wore a set of Cadillac "sombrero" hubcaps with Tucker crests in the centers, as in photo #3.

Martyn