Auto industry / Business & brands
Preston Tucker
1903–1956 · automobile entrepreneur and designer
Lincoln Park–raised car dreamer behind the futuristic Tucker 48, whose story became the 1988 film Tucker: The Man and His Dream.
- Born
Capac, Michigan- Died
Ypsilanti, Michigan
aged 53- Birth name
- Preston Thomas Tucker
- Detroit years
- 1900s–1933, 1935–1956
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Tucker was born on a farm near Capac and grew up in Lincoln Park, a Downriver suburb of Detroit. He attended Cass Technical High School but left to work as an office boy at Cadillac, and in his twenties he served as a Lincoln Park police officer and sold cars at Detroit dealerships. After working with race-car builder Harry Miller, he settled in Ypsilanti in 1939, where a machine shop in a barn behind his house produced the Tucker Combat Car and a gun turret used on wartime aircraft. After the war he set out to build a safe, modern sedan; the Tucker 48 offered a rear engine, a padded dashboard and a swiveling center headlight. Only 51 cars were finished before the company collapsed in 1949 amid a federal fraud trial that ended in acquittal. He died in Ypsilanti in 1956 and is buried in Flat Rock.
Highlights
- Tucker 48 sedan: 51 cars built, 1947–1949
- Tucker gun turret used on U.S. aircraft in World War II
- Acquitted of mail-fraud and securities charges in 1950
- Subject of Francis Ford Coppola's 1988 film Tucker: The Man and His Dream
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1910s
Cass Technical High School
He attended Detroit's technical high school before leaving to work at Cadillac.
Memorial
Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum
Museum in a historic dealership a few blocks from Tucker's former shop, with a Preston Tucker display.
Buried here · 1956
Michigan Memorial Park
The Downriver cemetery where Tucker is buried.