Editor’s note: David Krumboltz’s regular column is on hiatus until further notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In its place, we’re running some of Dave’s favorite past columns. This one originally ran in March 2018.

Today I have a sad story about a man and his dream. The dream was about building a car unlike any other that had ever been built. It would be futuristic with features never before seen, and it would be safer than any other car on the road.

The man was Preston Tucker, a successful car man with executive sales experience at Dodge, Studebaker and other companies. He was good at raising money, as he did from Henry Ford to build an Indy race car. He’d also built a high-speed military scout car in 1937, but this dream started even before World War II ended.

Tim McGrane, the Blackhawk Museum’s executive director, showed me this issue’s 1948 Tucker “48” now on display, supplied me with a stack of historical data and told me much about the dream that failed to materialize. “The ’48’ model designation,” he said, “represents the year the car came to market.”

After the war, the country was starving for new cars. After all, there had been no new civilian cars produced for almost five years. Studebaker was the first with an all-new car in 1947, but even that car used much of the existing technology. When the Big Three automakers resumed car production, they were basically building their 1942 models with minor face-lifting. They fabricated those for the 1946-48 model years, selling them as fast as they could be assembled.

It was an exciting time in the auto industry, and America was clearly the world’s automotive leader. The Tucker wasn’t just a new look using tried-and-true industry specifications. It was as revolutionary in 1948 as the Tesla was in 2003.

It’s said the car business is like a three-legged stool. One leg is money, another is management and the third leg is facilities. Preston Tucker had two sturdy legs of the stool. He had the management and facilities, the largest building under one roof in Chicago that he leased from the government and had been used to build B-29 engines during the war. The weak leg was that he was short on money, and there is no substitute for cash.

The car was jaw-droppingly stylish, designed by Alex Tremulis. The torpedo-shaped car was a fastback with a 128-inch wheelbase and stood only 60 inches high, very low for the 1940s. McGrane stated that “It was a rear-wheel-drive, rear-engine car with the engine being a modified air-cooled helicopter motor from the war that generated 166 horsepower and weighed only 320 pounds. The Tucker had performance as well, accelerating from zero to 60 in about 10 seconds and a top speed of 120 mph.”

The premier automotive expert at that time was a writer named Tom McCahill for the popular magazine Mechanix Illustrated. When he wrote an article for the August 1948 issue, he had just visited the Chicago factory and was impressed with the activity of some 2,000 workers and Tucker cars in various stages of production.

There were negative rumors about the car, the most frequent was that it didn’t have a reverse gear. In that issue he wrote, “Tucker is building an automobile! And brother, it’s a real automobile! I want to go on record right here and now as saying that it is the most amazing American car I have seen to date; its performance is out of this world.”

McGrane said, “One of the features many people familiar with the car like and comment on is the ‘cyclops-eye’ headlight that turned with the front wheels of the car to help with visibility around corners. At the time, there were 17 states that had laws against a vehicle having more than two headlights, so Tucker made a cover for the center light for cars that would be sold in those states.”

The Tucker 48 had four-wheel independent suspension with no springs using rubber torsion tubes with shock absorbers — very innovative. Ford was still using the two lateral “buggy springs” suspension. There were more innovations, like doors that were cut into the roof of the car to make entry and exit easier. To help equalize wear on the bench seats, the front and rear seats were interchangeable. There were many safety features including a pop-out windshield, recessed switches and knobs and huge bumpers.

McGrane said Tucker offered seat belts, but some people thought that if one needed to wear a seat belt, the car must be dangerous to drive or ride in. Only 51 Tuckers were built, including the prototype, and experts believe there are still 47 of them in existence. Those cars sold for about $4,000, the price of a Cadillac, or about $42,160 in today’s dollars.

So, what happened? In my next column I will tell you of the sad ending to this beautiful automotive dream.

Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicles or to read more of Dave’s columns, visit mercurynews.com/author/david-krumboltz.