The Birth of the Tucker Corporation
Hard as it is to believe these days, when news outlets seize on a handful of deaths and injuries and begin screaming that we're all going to die, this was considered to simply be a fact of life. Obviously, Tucker saw things a bit differently.
Of course, for most people, just having a car was an accomplishment. Henry Ford may have put America on wheels with his Model T, but the Great Depression did it's best to take those cars away from people. As the Great Depression grew worse, car makers not only saw their sales slip, but many of them like Duesenberg, disappeared completely. Things hit bottom in 1938, and only started a slow climb back up in 1940.
By December 6th, 1941, things had stabilized for the automobile industry. Sales were picking up, and with the increase in military contracts brought about by Roosevelt's aiding the Allies, as well as his efforts to build up American military power, even those companies, such as Studebaker, who were still struggling from the effects of the Depression, were optimistic that things would soon be better. Of course, December 7th would change all that.
With the country at war, production of civilian automobiles ended in February 1942. Any cars built after that point, would be sold to the military. Most of the car makers, however, built few cars during the war, other than military Jeeps. Producing instead, tanks, engines for aircraft and marine use and whatever else Uncle Sam deemed necessary for the war. At this point, if you wanted a new car, you had to wait until the war was over, and nobody knew when that would be.
Government control of the auto industry extended beyond just dictating what they produced, however. Wages were frozen at prewar levels, even the amount of overtime pay was limited. Profits were capped as well, using a complex formula which tried to ensure that no one got too rich and the government didn't go broke before the war's end. Due to a quirk in the formula, companies which hadn't shown a profit before the war, barely earned enough during the war. This put them at a disadvantage when civilian production was later resumed. Car makers were also prohibited from working on designs for new models, so that meant when production finally resumed, the cars rolling off the assembly line would be little changed from 1942 models. (The sole exception to this was Studebaker, who had most of their design work done by an outside company, thus they could have the outside company work on the postwar models during the war, and be the first out of the gate with a completely new car.)
Like many Americans, Tucker could tell that war was looming on the horizon as the 1940's approached. Drawing on his experience building Indy race cars with the legendary Harry A. Miller, Tucker decided to build a high speed combat car, which was armor plated and mounted two .50 cal machine guns in a turret. The company that would build this was called the Tucker Aviation Company. The Army, which at this point, was still scrambling around for a replacement for the horse (no joke, more about this later) didn't want it since they saw no need for a vehicle which could drive 117 MPH in combat (even today, the Army doesn't have any ground vehicles which can go that fast, AFAIK). Tucker had sunk a considerable amount of money into the combat car and desperately needed to recoup his investment in it. So he showed his car to the other branches of the military in hopes that one of them would agree to buy it. The Army Air Force saw no need for the car, but liked his turret design and agreed to buy that.
Now, as you can see, Tucker's combat car looks a lot like the first military Jeeps. As it turns out, this is not a coincidence, nor, apparently, as has been commonly thought, did the American Bantam Company develop the Jeep in a frenzy in 1940. According to information I've obtained from the American Bantam/Austin Club, Preston Tucker's partner and mentor, Harry Miller was working for Bantam in the late 1930s, building a four wheel drive vehicle. It seems likely that Miller brought his knowledge of the car with him when he and Tucker began building the combat car.
