How Tucker Got His Plant Back

[Tuckerfan1053]

I've been poking around the Truman Presidential Library's online site, and found a rather interesting tidbit.

We decided that the veterans housing program just wasn't going to work unless something new and drastic was inserted in it. So, what we tried to do was to get RFC to give 100 percent loans to companies who could really offer something new--either on-site mass production or like Lustron, who we thought could offer off-site prefabrication out of steel.

Well, several things were going forth at the same time. We were trying to get 100 percent loans from Jesse Jones at RFC. That was one of the things we wanted. We also needed a factory for Lustron, and the available factory was the big surplus engine factory, Pratt and Whitney, in Chicago. A guy named [Preston] Tucker, who wanted to build a rear-engine car, got an option on Pratt and Whitney. It was an engine place in Chicago; that is my recollection now. And Lustron came in and said, "That's the perfect factory to build prefabricated housing, the perfect place, and we want it."

There was no need for automobiles, for Christ sake; there were plenty of companies who could build automobiles, but there was only one company that said they could build prefabricated houses en mass. Wilson was out of town, so I signed the order taking Pratt & Whitney away from Tucker and giving it to, I think the man's name was Strandlund, of Lustron.

Then we lose the election. All of this happens about the same time; and then we lose the '46 election. Then, Wyatt wrote a letter to Truman saying what had to be done to save the housing program. We were pretty well admitting we were not building the number of houses that we needed. And so Wyatt wrote this letter outlining everything that needed to be done. We all worked on it all night, and the letter was delivered to the White House in the morning. I don't know the sonofabitch that leaked that letter, but somebody showed Truman the outlines of that letter in the Wall Street Journal, and he went through the roof. Wilson got a letter back. I got a call from his Secretary, "Get in here." Wilson handed me a letter from Truman. He was ashen. It said something like, "I do not like to read my mail in the Wall Street Journal." I can't quote the exact language but you probably have it anyway. You've probably got that letter.

The piece goes on to say that Truman was so mad about the leak, that he forced them to give the plant back to Tucker. (For those of you only familiar with the movie's version of events, Tucker had the plant yanked out from under him before he ever got to build his first car in it. He got it back a short time later, but it was a harbringer of things to come.)

[Larry Clark]

The first posting is a great find/post. Very interesting. Truman might also have been motivated to reverse the Lustron decision because of the then still very strong level of support that Tucker had from the UAW (the UAW was a very powerful supporter of Truman). The UAW had some concerns about Tucker's ability to produce his car. However, if it was not to be Tucker they wanted the plant to go to another car manufacturer, not to Lustron.