The Tucker 48, by any measure, is an intriguing and almost irresistible subject, but to focus on the car itself might be overlooking an equally interesting aspect of the Tucker narrative.
“The story’s really about Tucker, the man, his personality and how that got displayed in the product he was trying to bring to the public,” said attorney Steve Lehto, author of “Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build The Car of Tomorrow.” “It would’ve been fascinating to see — I believe just as fascinating — if nobody’d interfered with him, just to watch and see what happened. He might not have succeeded, but I’ll bet he would’ve built more than 50 cars.”
Lehto had just presented a program during the 75th Anniversary Celebration of the Tucker 48 at The AACA Museum in which he detailed Preston Tucker’s legal nightmares. His talk looked at some of the developments ranging from the merely unusual to the nearly inexplicable that came up during the course of the trials.
“Preston Tucker sold the stock, started the factory, and started building cars,” he explained during the program. “The Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating Tucker, we do not know why. Trust me when I tell you, the extensive research I did, digging in the various archives including in Chicago, with the museum, with the (Tucker Automobile Club of America), I’ve read more legal documents, I had to file a lawsuit (to unseal a transcript) because of this book.”
When Tucker asked why, Lehto said, the SEC replied that it had found deficiencies in connection with the stock offering and the annual report. Typically, he said, errors could be corrected via an amended report, but when Tucker and his attorneys spoke to the SEC about that, the matter of the stock offering was brought up and he was told that a correction or amendment was not possible. He was also told the commission required information.
“They said, ‘We
