MovieChat Forums > Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) Discussion > Why the Tucker 48 failed

Why the Tucker 48 failed

posted 11 years ago by imdb2-32
1 reply | jump to latest

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/What+caused+the+Tucker+automobile+corpor ation+to+fail%3F-a0189290263

Conclusion:

"Despite the portrayal of an alliance between the automotive industry and the SEC to bring down the Tucker Corporation in the 1988 movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream, historians have found no evidence of a conspiracy.

Rather, historical evidence suggests that the demise of the Tucker Corporation was the result of two problems:

First, the company's lack of financial planning led to continual crises. Tucker's refusal to utilize conventional bank loans combined with the company's attempt to sell dealerships and stock before building a car prototype scared away normal venture capital.

Second, unable to sell additional stock or dealerships, the Tucker Corporation needed money to start producing cars. With no inventory to sell and the SEC's determination that pre-selling car features was illegal, the Tucker Corporation was financially bankrupt."

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[–] dave4248185 11 years ago

I agree. The people who say this guy "got screwed" by the system seem to forget one thing. Tucker was trying to build an entire automobile company in 1947......FROM SCRATCH. But he had "innovations." So? You could design a car that flew, ran on fused hydrogen and featured a life like robotic female to give you hand jobs while "she" rode shotgun....If you're building your company from the ground up you'll still have a hard time making it work. They weren't making cough drops, they were making cars. Those are extremely complicated. Tucker talked about admiring Edison, the Wright brothers and Ford. Yeah, those guys were creating new industries, not competing with established corporations who had a VAST infrastructure. Tucker was a very good engineer, but as you pointed out he didn't have much business acumen. Sometimes that's actually more important.