Better Than The Real Thing - Tucker 48
If you can even find an original Tucker ’48 sedan, prepare to part with much green to call yourself an owner. Or just get in line for one of these inspired, twin-turbo, multimedia originals.
The Tucker ’48 Sedan is now little more than a footnote in the annals of automobile history, but its story is the stuff of legend and the raw material for any telling of the American Dream. An innovative car in its post-World War II prime, the Tucker ’48 struggled in production and became the lasting symbol of the Tucker Corporation’s collapse. Only 51 models reached the road. It might be one of the last old-school cars you’d expect to see dumped and bagged on 22s, with an A/V system, showing at a national car show.
But that’s exactly what we found when we met Rob Ida at CA&E’s inaugural Trifecta event in Philadelphia, PA. Ida calls his car a 2006 New Tucker 48, an appropriate name given that he and his crew at Ida Automotive and Rob Ida Concepts in Morganville, NJ, built the car, frame up, from scratch, inspired by and modeled on the original Tucker ’48.
Ida built his first Tucker-based creation - this particular car is actually his third model - for his grandfather Joe, who was among a handful of men that signed on as Tucker dealers. Joe Ida opened his doors for business just three days before the SEC shut down the Tucker Corporation factory for alleged fraud. Although founder Preston Tucker and his executives were later cleared of all charges, the fallout was final and Joe Ida got caught in it. Heavily invested in dealership infrastructure (building, service equipment), Joe Ida returned deposits to his 130 prospective customers and went bust in the aftermath.
The High Price of “Failure”
Joe Ida remained friendly with Preston Tucker and attended a government sell-off of the factory, hoping to bag one of the cars. But already in the red, he was outbid and watched as prices for original Tuckers skyrocketed in the following years. Rob Ida says there are 47 or 48 originals still known to run that trade among collectors at around $300,000 a piece.
“That car was always a thorn in [my grandfather’s] side,” Ida says. “He’d always bring up the Tucker story, about how much money he’d lost and how great the car was. But it never seemed realistic to own a car. We realized that it was possible to achieve this another way. We fabricate cars from scratch, so why not fabricate a Tucker for him?”
Scratch began with a Franklin Mint 1:24 scale model from which Ida gathered his dimensions before moving on to fabricating a frame for a rear-engine, rear-drive configuration like the original. At nearly the same time, work began on the main body (from rear firewall to the back of the forward trunk), which would later be completed by custom panels, bumpers and trim.
But even before Ida broke ground on the original project, he had no intention to build a slavish replica. The original sedan’s styling, futuristic for its time, begged for some bling, he says. “With only 51 cars built, it would have been counter-productive to modify the original in any way. But on the other hand, the styling just screams out for a set of 22s, air ride, twin turbos and a killer entertainment system.”
With the chassis welded, blasted and painted black, Ida enlisted Fatman Fabrications to create the independent front suspension, cross members and A-arms that would ultimately house the Air Ride Technologies suspension. As a tiny example of how detailed and exact Ida approached this build, the air tank is welded to brackets, which are welded to the frame, and sits merely a quarter-inch below the floorpan.
