Automotive Book Recommendation

[Tuckerfan1053]

I'm currently reading Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History by Jason Vuic which details how Malcolm Bricklin imported first the wildly unsafe Subaru 360 to the US and then bilked the Canadian government out millions of dollars to build the Bricklin, before suckering people into investing hundreds odf millions of dollars to import the Yugo into the US. While some people might like to compare Tucker and Bricklin, its screamingly obvious from almost the beginning of the book that Bricklin was no Tucker. Bricklin never ran a successful corporation in his life (while Tucker had great success working for several different companies).

And Bricklin, straight up, was a con man, who spent his investors money on garish office decorations, paid exorbitant salaries to family members who were on the payroll, and simply paid no attention to things like "quality" and "safety." It really should be on the reading list of fans of Tucker, because of how marked the contrast is between the two of them are.

[John K.]

Another interesting comparison can be made between the Tucker story and the Avro Arrow story. Though not automotive in nature, the Arrow story consists of a company with a young, charismatic leader who defies convention, and fights political battles, while attempting to develop and manufacture the absolute finest military fighter jet in the world of 1958. The story took place in Canada, but many aspects of it seem to mirror the Tucker story, at least in my view. The company lost out to politics, and the Arrow was slated to be absolutely expunged from history! (Those efforts didn't work, thankfully).

[TuckerCar]

I read that last summer. I think Bricklin was a bit more of a con artist than Tucker.

[Tuckerfan1053]

I read that last summer. I think Bricklin was a bit more of a con artist than Tucker.

That's sort of like saying being shot hurts a bit more than a paper cut, though.