What makes a car collectable? Find out as we dive into the 1948 Tucker 48 in the Petersen Automotive Museum Vault. Bearing serial number 30, the Petersen Automotive Museum’s vehicle has had eight documented owners beginning with Preston Tucker himself (who allowed it to be used for testing at Indianapolis) and ending in 1996 with Margie and Robert E. Petersen. It was to become their first acquisition after founding the museum, setting a high standard by which every subsequent acquisition would be judged.
Powered by a tried-and-true Franklin helicopter engine, mated to the transmission of an 810 or 812 Cord, the Tucker featured a proprietary water-cooling system. The Tucker’s rear mounted Franklin aircraft engine could push the 4,500-pound car from zero to sixty in under 10 seconds, but throwing it into a turn could spell disaster for any driver not familiar with how to handle such a heavy car with a pronounced rear-weight bias. There was not much he could do to change the physics of unrefined weight distribution, but were Preston Tucker still with us, he would be able to take comfort in the knowledge that his ideas of incorporating a padded dash and pop-out windshield to protect passengers in the event of a collision have long been universally employed.
Safety innovations not as well received over the long term were the Tucker’s centrally-mounted third headlight, which was said to improve nighttime vision when cornering because the light would turn in the direction of the front wheels. The claim made good press, but the pivoting headlight lit the way only after the driver had committed to a turn, providing no advanced look into the darkness. Even more questionable a safety innovation was the “Safety Crash Chamber” under the dash, a space into which the front seat occupants could dive when they saw that an accident was inevitable.
But it all became a moot point when the government and unhappy investors initiated legal action against Tucker. Their biggest claim was that he never intended to build a car. And while a spectacular gathering of several Tucker automobiles on the street outside the courthouse during his trial dramatically disproved the allegation, Tucker the man had lost his appetite for playing a high-stakes game with a buy-in that proved to be hopelessly inadequate.
Today, Tucker would probably have been pleased to know that he would be immortalized in film by Francis Ford Coppola and his cars would ultimately become so important to serious collectors, historians, and scholars that as much study has been given to researching their individual ownership histories as any important race car or long-lost classic.
