Looking to the future in 1948... [PIC]

After WWll, with there being no evolution in design since production was frozen in 1941, the smaller manufacturers and entrepreneurs could start dead even with the majors for the blossoming post war car market. Enter Preston Tucker who was looking to innovations in design, power trains and safety far beyond what others had planned. His initial designs had to be constantly scaled back for lack of capital rather than desire. This first hand-built prototype was nicknamed the "Tin Goose" by Chief Stylist Alex Tremulis. 

   This car has so much that didn't survive in the production car. In the padded dash area, you see a vast void on the passenger side which was "crash chamber" for the passenger and the customary glove box was on the door panel. The driver would be protected by a collapsible steering column that Tucker had patented. This prototype had a unique 589 cid fuel injected hydraulic OHV hemi flat six using direct drive torque converters for each driving wheel. None of these features survived into production and the final power plant was based on the air cooled flat six that was built to power the bubble topped Bell helicopter which he, for some reason, reconfigured to be liquid cooled.

There's quite a story behind the "Tin Goose" and the subsequent shot production run... which is why the story became a movie.