The Story Of Tucker 1004, NASCAR’s Unicorn

The automobile industry really took off in the States in the 1950s. Between America being the only one of the world’s superpowers to have not suffered great industrial loss in World War II, the Highway Project connecting cities to their suburbs and even to rural areas and rising wages making them accessible to even the working class, the automotive industry in the United States was in a spot it had never been in and hasn’t been in since. Many different manufacturers popped up in the late 40s and early 50s, Nash, Studebaker, and today’s subject, Tucker, and its lone representative, the Tucker 48 #1004.

Credit to Pinterest

The Tucker 48, often nicknamed the Tucker Torpedo, has a whole different, interesting story behind it, but in short, the Tucker 48 was conceived by Preston Tucker, an automotive entrepreneur and motor racing fan, in 1946. The car was one of the modern proposals of its day, and once it secured a contract to be produced, it appeared possible that the United States automotive industry could skip forward a few years. Tucker had hired the very best in the industry to assist him, and pushed for some incredible inclusions. The Tucker 48 was to include fuel injection, which took another 35 years to be generally included in American automobiles, disc brakes, which took 20 more years, a roll bar, a pop-out windshield, and more. Tucker intended to sell them for $1000, but the eventual retail cost was closer to $4000. $4000 is the equivalent of about $44000 today, about what an Audi TT costs. The original Tuckers were hand built, and cost $5000 to make. It likely would have cost much less on the assembly line.

However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was very wary of new automotive launches and kept a close eye on Tucker. After all, they’d given millions of dollars worth of grants to Kaiser-Frazer, and Kaiser-Frazer had wasted that money. Seemingly cracking under the SEC’s pressure and recognizing that this project could, with one wrong move, fall apart, several executives left the project, and backers began to pull out, taking this as a sign that things weren’t going well. Things weren’t going terribly, but indeed the project was one step away from the cliff’s edge, and once a journalist criticized the lack of a reverse gear in the first prototype, everything fell apart and stocks plummeted. Using some iffy comments by Tucker in a letter he had published in various newspapers in June 1948, U.S. Attorney Otto Kerner, Jr. ordered Tucker fork over his corporate records. Tucker did so, and in February 1949 a grand jury investigation commenced. That October, Tucker and his associates were brought to trial on 25 charges of mail fraud, one charge of conspiracy to defraud, and five charges of violating SEC regulations, and after a wild trial full of emotion, acknowledgement of corruption, demonstration of what the cars could do, and leaked documents, Tucker and associates were acquitted. Whatever Kerner’s reason for pursuing Tucker, the prosecution had completely failed to prove their case, and the defense had managed to turn the prosecution’s witness statements in the defense’s favor. Kerner would later be sent to prison on unrelated conspiracy-related charges in 1974, the first time someone in his position had gone to prison on such charges.

Despite his acquittal and optimistic outlook, Tucker’s automobile franchise was ruined. The company collapsed, and only 50 Tucker 48s were produced, all of them considered final prototypes. Preston Tucker himself died of lung cancer in 1956.

The 50 Tuckers had been variously distributed across the country by Preston Tucker’s subsidiaries in mid-1948, and once the possibility of mass manufacturing had been ruled out (at the time, believed to just be for the next couple months) in late 1948 or early 1949, the subsidiaries distributed them to various car salesmen. Tucker 1004, a gray car, was sent out to Tucker’s Pittsburgh distributor, then sold to Red Harris, who ran a nearby used car lot. Joe Merola of nearby Wilkinsburg, whose brother ran a similar used car lot, was given the okay to use the Tucker in NASCAR Grand National races.

Credit to Tom Merola & Hemmings Classic Car

The car, numbered 12, was sponsored by Joe Nagel, Jr.’s, another dealership in Pittsburgh. Cleverly, the number was actually part of the address (12 Charles Street, Mt. Oliver neighborhood, Pittsburgh), and the 12 was written on the side in different locations to make it read off properly. Unfortunately, Merola, who had run one Grand National race in 1949, wouldn’t be able to show off his sponsor very much, as in his first race in the Tucker at the Canfield Speedway, he broke his right rear axle on lap 1. This turned out to be a major problem with the 50 final prototype Tuckers, and one Preston had been aware of. The engine had so much torque that it was common to snap an axle in first gear. The manufacturers were aware of this and would have addressed it on the production line, but of course the Tucker 48 never got that far.

After this, the car was brought up to Monroe County Fairgrounds in New York, but again it didn’t last a lap, this time due to a ball joint. It was repaired in time for a one lap exhibition race against race winner Curtis Turner. It promptly snapped its axle again before that lap was finished. Yes, that’s three races in a row, including a one lap dash race, in which Merola’s race ended before lap one.

Merola then showed up to the Dayton Speedway later that year. It’s not known what car he was running. He was probably in a Ford. In any case, Merola, though many laps behind, was able to last most of the race, but he was caught up in a major race-ending crash where Johnny Mantz pierced the guardrail and threw debris onto the track surface. Whatever car Merola was running piled into this debris, and Merola was sent to the hospital with bruises and cuts.

Again, whether or not he ran the Tucker is unknown, but the Tucker was retired from NASCAR use after 1950. Merola ran a few races in 1951 before a crash left him with a bruised heart (which may or may not have been due to the crash in 1950, again it’s not really known) and retired from racing, though he remained a fan. Joe Merola moved to Florida in the mid-50s and had a successful career in aircraft sales, making sure to frequent Daytona whenever NASCAR stopped by and to tell the story of the car that wouldn’t stop breaking down. He died in 1994, in his late 60s.

Tucker 1004 was eventually sold by Harris to fellow Pennsylvanian Wayne Weaver, and in 1962 Weaver sold it to Raymond Burton of Fairfax, Virginia, who held onto the car for about 30 years. The years had not been nice to the car, and an incident where a few thieves stole some of the car’s parts in the late 60s didn’t help matters, but in 1976, Burton contracted Bill Hamlin to restore Tucker 1004. It took two years, but by mid 1978, the car was good as new, its interior revamped and renovated, and a new set of maroon paint replacing the old gray color. Burton took great care of the car afterwards, and in 1988, he brought it out to California for the filming of Francis Ford Coppola’s pet project Tucker: The Man and His Dream, where it showed up alongside 21 of its brethren. Tucker 1004 appears in a few bits in the movie, with Burton behind the wheel. Burton in fact heads a parade of Tuckers at one point in the film.

Ray Burton died a few years after the film, and his son Vic Burton took hold of the car. He briefly loaned it out to Richard Petty to use in Petty’s hometown museum for a little (apparently, neither knew of its NASCAR connection, and it seems Petty had it in his museum for other reasons), then sold it off to Happy’s Custom Auto Accessories in Las Vegas. Happy’s held it for some time, then sold it off to the Toyota Automobile Museum in Nagakute, Japan, who have held it ever since.

Credit to Tuckerclub

You’ll probably need a plane ticket if you want to go see Tucker 1004, but if you just want to see a Tucker in person, many more options are available. Of the 50 Tucker 48s produced, only three are known to have been destroyed, and quite a few museums have them on public display. Time has been nice to the Tuckers, which were an interesting experiment done in both by heavy bureaucratic corruption, the media sensationalizing a scoop, and an ambitious owner who showed perhaps a little too much passion for his passion project. However, NASCAR was not so nice to the one Tucker that hit the high banks alongside the Lincolns and Studebakers in 1950.

Sources:

“Torpedo Car Will Be Made In Chicago”, Traverse City Press-Journal, February 11, 1946

“An Open Letter To The Automobile Industry”, Preston Tucker, June 15, 1948

Court records of Stella v. Graham-Paige Motors Corporation, 1955

Tucker: The Man And His Dream, 1988 film by Francis Ford Coppola

“Identity of the Tucker 48 that competed in NASCAR is finally revealed”, March 2012 edition of Hemmings Classic Car

History Of The Marathon De La Route

Endurance races are exactly what they entail: endurances. They are made to be extremely long events that test drivers’ skill, patience, and stamina, along with cars’ speed and durability. The longest endurance race as of today is the Maxi Endurance 32 Hours at the Algarve circuit in Portugal, but it isn’t the longest endurance circuit race.

In 1931, the Liège – Rome – Liège was held for the first time. A road race from Belgium to Italy and back, this was a fairly standard road race from point to point. It usually started around 11pm on a Wednesday and the cars arrived back around 4pm on Sunday. The race was not held in 1936 due to a contestation of when to hold it, and was also not held between 1940 and 1949 for obvious reasons. It was a pretty average endurance race, there wasn’t much to it, it was another interesting challenge for drivers. Winners included Johnny Claes and Olivier Gendebien,

In 1961, the race’s destination moved from Rome to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, however the race was still out of and to Liège. This didn’t last much longer, however, as the race was going to move to a more permanent circuit. There was little particular reason behind the move, it was simply time to move on, and move on they did – to the Nordschleife at the Nurburgring – in 1965.

The 1965 race was an interesting one, lasting 82 hours, but the grid was surprisingly small. Despite being an endurance race and despite the old road races usually having massive grids, sometimes into the low hundreds, the 1965 Marathon De La Route only garnered 35 starters. The race was conducted with a little help from the Belgian military, who helped out with medical. The race itself was pretty quiet, won by Henri Greder and Johnny Rives in a Mustang. Rainer Ising and Bernd Degner were the GT class winners, in a Porsche. Their major competitor for said class fell out of the race due to a busted rear axle with less than an hour to go.

The race itself had some very strange rules. To be classified, teams had to complete the same amount of laps in the last twelve hours as they had in the first twelve. Also, the 14-mile course had to be lapped in 30 minutes in the first four hours, and 24 minutes in the proceeding hours. Refueling was done in a separate spot just before the pit lane proper, and tire changes were done in the pit lane. Most bizarrely, if a driver came across a part in the road, they were permitted to pull to the side, get out their tools from the toolbox each team carried, and use it to repair their car. Drivers could also do said repairs in an area a little beyond the pit lane, where they could receive verbal assistance from one of their crewmen (only verbal assistance though). Lastly, they could always just bring the part back to the pit lane and do repairs there, however any pit stops that lasted more than a minute would cause the team to lose a lap, though compared to the 1965 winner’s lap count of 310, one lap wasn’t an incredible amount. Additionally, every 75 laps, teams were given a five-lap window during which they could do up to 20 minutes worth of repairs in the pits without a penalty. Teams would be parked if they were stationary for more than 20 minutes in the pits.

The 1966 race was extended to 84 hours but was otherwise calm, being won by Julien Vernaeve and Andrew Hedges in an MG. Lucien Bianchi and Eric De Keyn had been the favorites to win, but their Ferrari was knocked out of the race by an accident caused by exhaustion.

Credit to Porsche Road & Race

The 1967 race was dominated by Porsche. Vic Elford, Hans Hermann, and Jochen Neerpasch brought the race home. Vic had come close to winning in 1966, but the car had blown up with 12 hours left. The race itself was marred by a fatal crash, when endurance racing veteran Georges Berger ran off the road and crashed his Porsche about a day into the race.

Credit to Porsche Road & Race

1968 saw a heated race, once again mostly dominated by Porsches. Once again, all of the Porsches’ major competitors had simply fallen off or had made major mistakes. Possibly the most interesting mistake was made by an MG C driven by Julien Vernaeve, Andrew Hedges and Tony Fall. During a late pit stop, they first overshot their stall, knocking over an official, then stopped to see what the problem was. It turned out to be blown brakes, and since cars could not reverse in the pit lane (they’d be disqualified if they did), had to do a lap before returning to the pits. The repairs lasted 18 minutes, costing them 17 laps.

The Porsche of Herbert Linge, Dieter Glemser and Willi Kauhsen won the race. They’d finished four laps ahead of their nearest opponent, but because they’d been docked four laps due to pit penalties, officially their margin of victory was less than a second.

Despite being a big road race, grids still weren’t picking up. 43 cars had started the 1967 race, and the 1968 race saw the same amount of starters. However things were about to change for 1969, 64 cars showing up for the race. For the 1969 race, a cavalry of Argentine IKA Torinos showed up, alongside a few Mercedes 220 Ds, which ran on diesel. These two cars ran in a special prototype class. In all, 21 different manufacturers were represented.

Credit to Racehistorie.nl

This iteration in particular was a little messy. The fastest two qualifiers, both Torinos, crashed out of the race, and Innes Ireland’s race ended with his Lancia Fulvia on its roof. The race, which was almost cancelled by local police due to one of the Torinos having a faulty exhaust, was eventually won by Harry Källström, Tony Fall, and Sergio Barbasio in a second Lancia Fulvia.

The 1970 race was extended slightly, to 86 hours, but the race itself was little different from how it had been. 64 cars showed up, however it was little contest after the first 24 hours. After their competition fell to the wayside, the Porsche 904 of Gérard Larrousse, Helmut Marko, and Claude Haldi led the whole way. Porsche had brought three 904s to the race, and they swept the top three. Their only real opponent was a works Rover that had dropped out after half a day.

Credit to Pinterest

The 1971 race was the beginning of the end. Only 39 entries showed to the track, none of the big Porsches or other works teams among them. Due to this, and the race being extended to an amazing 96 hours, few spectators showed up. Jacques Henry, Jean-Luc Thérier, and Maurice Nusbaumer won the race in an Alpine A110. Absolutely nothing notable happened, and the race as it was was not repeated.

The event isn’t dead, however. It is still going today, using the old Liège – Rome – Liège name, as a historical tour. The revival event itself runs through Belgium and France, lasting four days, though not without breaks of course. It has been very successful, and captures the spirit of the old event – well, partially, because there will likely never be something as wild as when they ran at the Green Hell, and with that, the Marathon De La Route will likely remain a thing of the past.

Source:

https://liege-rome-liege.org/en/

1967 – Marathon de la Route

https://touringcarracing.net

Porsche Road and Race