Norman Timbs involvment with Preston Tucker

[SuperFleye]

I'm currently writing a featured story on Norman Timbs and his Norman Timbs Buick Special that he built in the late 1940s. The homemade Streamliner has a rear/mid mounted engine, so I thought about the Tucker Automobiles before I found the statement.

Here is a photo of the Streamliner:



And here is what I have on the subject so far: http://www.kustomrama.com/index.php?title=Norman_Timbs%27_Buick_Special

I was wondering if anyone here knows how Norman E. Timbs was associated with Preston Tucker and his automobiles?

[streamliner]

Superfleye:

Here's what I've found so far. It either may or may not be related to Norman Timbs' involvement with Tucker, but I hope it helps you in your research. In any case, if he did have access to the styling studio, there may be some streamliner connection.

First, take a closer look at the following photo of the two Tin Goose mockups, around March/April 1947:



If you zoom in, just in front of Phil Egan you'll see two of Tremulis' Tammen and Denison renderings on the wall:



The first one is one of the fixed-fender proposals:



But the second one is of a streamliner dated 6-1-1946:



I have a partial description for this rendering as a Novi-powered streamliner with a driver-adjustable wing to provide more or less downforce, but I don't have the whole story yet. This streamliner was rendered immediately following the 1946 Indianapolis 500 where Alex was present with his friend from A-C-D, the legendary Ab Jenkins. There he also met Lou Welch and the famed Novi engines. One of the drivers in that year's 500 was Ralph Hepburn in a Novi-powered car. Tremulis and Hepburn met at the 1946 Indy time trials and would become very close friends as Hepburn would eventually become the head of Tucker's racing program. Unfortunately Hepburn died in a horrific crash during the 1948 Indy time trials. That event crushed morale at Tucker.



In any case, these car nuts travel in very small circles, with Preston Tucker surrounded by more than his share of autoholics. So it wouldn't be a surprise to see these guys gravitate towards each other. If Timbs was in the process of building his own streamliner, depending on what he did for Tucker, odds are good that he was able to consult with some of Tucker's experts. It also wouldn't be too far a stretch to think that Timbs had the Bonneville Salt Flats in his sights for his streamliner, which may be another path you might want to investigate. There may be six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, but these guys usually only had two or three degrees from one another...

A special thanks to both John and Tucker for their tireless search for the tiniest of clues found in their archives. Without their detective work, I never would have thought about taking a microscope to details in photos that were previously taken for granted...

[SuperFleye]

Thanks a lot for your detailed answer. You should put all of your info and photos together in a book!

[streamliner]

Superfleye:

Here's your connection, from the H.A.M.B. forum on Timbs' Special: It seems that Norman Timbs was very good at building Indianapolis race cars. He evidently had a hand in building or re-building the Blue Crown Special in the late 1940's. That car was built in 1938 and raced regularly at Indy, notably at 1946's 500:



You may recognize the center man standing behind the car... None other than Joe Lencki! It seems the car was built by Lencki and Fred Offenhauser. I don't know who the other two men flanking Lencki are, but it shouldn't be too hard to identify them.

Mecum put this car up for auction earlier this year: http://mecum.com/auctions/lot_detail.cfm?LOT_ID=SC0509-79221

The highlights for the car is a Who's Who list in the building of Tucker's Tin Goose (Lencki, Rigling brothers, Miller). I think if you can search Lencki's or Offenhauser's records (or the current owners' records), you'll find that Timbs was involved in the Blue Crown race car, maybe the rear-engined Tucker-Lencki Partner Special Indy car, and subsequently the building of Preston Tucker's passenger cars:

The Blue Crown Special's highlights:

- Built in 1938 by Joe Lencki in Chicago, Illinois
- Current owner is the second owner, who purchased the car from the estate of Joe Lencki & spent 3 years restoring it to its 1946 livery
- All pictures, records, spare equipment, & memorabilia came with the car
- All aluminum body by the Rigling brothers
- 2-speed Miller transmission
- This car was the first with an advanced design disc brake system
- Kurtis built fuel & oil tanks
- Early Ford suspension front & rear
- DOHC 265 CI engine designed by Leo Goossen in 1938 (owner has original blue prints). Built by Joe Lencki & Fred Offenhauser
- Winfield carburetors

Don't be too surprised if you find that the awesome bodywork on the Timbs Special was done by the Rigling brothers! It seems these guys really do travel in small circles. In this case it was 2 1/2 miles in circumference located in the center of Indiana...

[SuperFleye]

Thanks for the lead. So this means that Lencki probably was the connection between both Timbs and Tucker. I will try to do more research on this subject. Maybe Timbs wasn't involved with the Tucker 48 at all, but maybe he was involved with the Tucker-Lencki indy car?

[Tuckerfan1053]

Interesting, when I think of Tucker and Buick, this is what tends to spring to mind:



(It apparently started out life as a Buick.)

[streamliner]

It's funny, but the Buick fenderline and lower stance somewhat resembles the Neidlinger model at the Tucker studio:





I guess that makes the Buick-Tucker a Bucker. It's a good thing it didn't start life as a Ford .

[Tuckeroo]

I had the privilege of identifying the above model for Autopuzzles, what's interesting is that Alex Tremulis began work on that sports car model while at Tucker (as a Jaguar XK120 rival, also introduced in 1948), and continued to develop it while at Kaiser-Frazer, as seen here. This is one of my favorite designs of his, would love to try and build it 1:1 scale someday (and somehow)! Only why is it known as the Neidlinger model?

[TuckerCar]

I guess that makes the Buick-Tucker a Bucker. It's a good thing it didn't start life as a Ford .

Which reminds me of the joke:

For my wife's birthday I didn't know whether to get her:
A Kaiser and surprise her,
A Frazer and amaze her,
Or a Tucker and ....

One of these days I'm going to push past Jay and Bill and tell that joke at a convention.

Anyway, carry on. Sorry to interrupt.

[streamliner]

You can usually find a great leader by the subsequent accomplishments of those who were inspired. If Timbs did meet up with Preston Tucker and decided to build his own car, he certainly wouldn't be the last one to try and do so. From the Chicago Sunday Times, 4-23-1949:





I wouldn't be surprised, though, if it didn't start out as a Tucker sportscar proposal, and then grew a whole new identity as things began to unravel at Tucker Corp. The model looked unfinished and unpainted in the May 1948 photo and the Neidlinger-Tremulis newspaper article wasn't until April, 1949. So what happened in-between, I'm not sure. I've seen this model described elsewhere as the "Tremulis Nightlinger" car, but even though that would be a great name, I think that was a mispronunciation of "Neidlinger". In any case, Pontiac Studios was hired to photograph Alex and the model:



As Alex would say, his completed designs are best looked at through a rear-view mirror. So, in the interest of keeping the design new and fresh, and not having Photoshop at his disposal, he took his pen to the studio photos. In this case he wanted to work over the front fenders and the top.









From there he went back to the drawing board to incorporate his new concepts into the final rendering, complete with wind brakes and racing cockpit fairing:



The original model was reworked to add the fenders to the front and repainted. He also built the removable port-holed moon-roofed hardtop to go with it:



It then resurfaced at K-F where it was used in several of their promotional pieces illustrating their version of the Car of the Future at Kaiser-Frazer:





And here's Tremulis at K-F with the finished model on his credenza.



And the drawing on the boards at the time was billed as another one you'll never own...



Tuckeroo, have you got more info on the model at Tucker Corp.? By the way, you've been blasting those AutoPuzzles...

SuperFleye, I can't wait to see what you uncover with the Timbs-Tucker connection...

TuckerCar,

[Tuckeroo]

I first saw photographs of the model in the July 1985 issue of Collectible Automobile in the interview with Alex Tremulis "The Future That Might Have Been" wherein he provided photographs of the model as it appeared in ostensibly in 1948 (though it would seem from what you've posted above closer to 1949), described as "a 1/8 scale model for a Jaguar-like sports car as a possible 1948 extension [of the Tucker line.]" Then I saw it again in it's later iteration in Science and Mechanics October 1951 (which you have provided a portion of above) and recognized it instantly as a modification of the same design, but this time as a proposal for Kaiser Frazer...which enabled me to provide a detailed answer to Autopuzzles

Beyond that I have very little other information to confirm that the model was on the discussion table at Tucker, but Alex Tremulis felt it was worth including in the 1985 interview on "what might have been" had the Tucker Corporation thrived. And of course we have the very telling photograph showing this model alongside a model of the '48 sedan, though in a slightly different stage of a development. You've actually filled in a lot of gaps for me in the genesis of this fascinating proposal, thank you! I think from what has been pieced together it's fair to say it was a Tucker proposal, next a Neidlinger proposal, next a Kaiser-Frazer proposal...if it was anything else before, after, or in-between, I have no record of it. And Norman Timbs' car may be the closest anyone has come to building anything similar in 1:1 scale...albeit with a rear-engine, but since that was a Tucker proclivity it may reflect even more accurately what a "production" version of the car would have been like under the auspices of Preston Tucker.

[SuperFleye]

Streamliner, I'm still digging around trying to find out Norman's involvement with the Tucker, but in the meantime I just thought I should share some fresh photos of his wonderful Streamliner, ain't she a beauty?

[streamliner]

Now that is an amazing restoration of an awesome car! The photographer did such an unbelievable job capturing the lines of the car that it almost looks fake!