Tucker / Porsche connection?

[Mysterytrain]

I was in Napa last week and missing my car. My Wife and I stopped in at the Coppola Vineyard. Upstairs there was a collection of Coppola movie memoriblia, including a 1948 Tucker..I couldn't help but think..911.

Rear engine -sports muffler?



Fuel Filler Door



Front Trunk



Engine cooling vents



Decklid

[Chuck Moreland]

If I remember correctly, air cooled too.

[FrayAdjacent911]

Coincidence?? I think not....

[Hetmann]

Would you go with the whale tail or the duck?

I thought the same thing...

[pmillikin]

Tuckers are air cooled. If I remember correctly the powerplant is a helicopter engine.
Now if porsche made helicopter engines.... a call to Oliver Stone is in order.

[KobaltBlau]

Neat. I wasn't impressed with the Coppola wine, though...

[kmhemi]

The Tucker was a cool car. WAY ahead of his time. The guy was genius when it comes to cars. ..Too bad people are blind when someone thinks that far ahead of you. Isn't there a new car that has the headlights following the steering wheel now? I saw the advertisement for it and they talked like it some some new idea they just came up with ???

[safe]

Boxer engine too, right?
I think many people were far from blind, thats the reason it went the way it did.
Both the Ford Focus and the Citroen C3 has moving headlights.

[Mysterytrain]

Did some research for ya'll:

Tucker 48 Specifications:
Engine: H-6 (horizontally opposed), ohv, 335 ci (4.50 x 3.50 in. bore x stroke), 7.0:1 compression ratio, 166 bhp, 372 lbs/ft torque.
Size: 128" wheelbase, 219" overall length, 60" height, 79" width, 4200 pounds.
Performance: 0-60 in 10 seconds, est. top speed 120 mph
Original (projected) price: $2450
Current value: from about 1/4 million to 1/2 million (Tucker #1030 sold at auction in March, 1996 for $259,000)
Yes, it could go in reverse and was a water bumper. The radiator sat behind that huge chrome rear grille.


The firing order for the Tucker engine was 1-4-5-2-3-6. Odd cylinders on the left bank, even on the right. The timing mark on the balance ring below the water pump is the pointer.
Timing is 10 degrees BTC on Retard. 40 degrees on Advanced.

[Gene-o]

Wasn't the Tucker engine built by Franklin?

[norustscott]

The heart of every great car is a great engine, but Tucker didn't want to waste the time and money to develop his own, especially when there were a bunch of Army surplus helicopter engines lying around that could be had for a song. With a little warbling, Tucker lined up a supply of horizontally opposed six cylinder engines from Air-Cooled Motors, a descendant of the old Franklin marque. Of course, on the other side of the pond, an engineer named Ferdinand Porsche was also fiddling around with horizontally opposed, air-cooled engines for Volkswagen and for the car company that bore his name.

But, in contrast to Porsche, Tucker was no engineer, and the helicopter engine was no VW engine. Big and bulky, particularly after it was converted to water cooling, the military surplus powerplant displaced a serious 334 cubic inches (5.5 liters) and produced 165 horsepower at 3200 rpm. In an era in which the Chevrolet "stovebolt" six was churning out 90 horsepower, this was heady stuff, but what could have been sublime turned ridiculous when Tucker decided to position this substantial mass above and behind the rear wheels.

Of course, Tucker's rationale was to put the weight over the driving wheels for better traction. On the face of it, it makes sense, and Tucker did have distinguished company. Czechoslovakia's Tatra 77 had used a very similar arrangement in 1935, with its air-cooled V-8 behind the rear axle, and one doesn't have to mention that Ferdinand Porsche was a proponent of the rear-engine configuration.

Time and physics have shown, however, that a large, heavy object like an automobile (or helicopter) engine placed in the rear of a vehicle will often cause the back end to try to overtake the front end, particularly in turns or under hard braking. So in putting the engine in the rear Tucker was both ahead of his time and well behind it.
more...

That didn't stop him from moving forward with his plan. He commissioned well-known and well-respected auto stylist Alex Tremulis to draw up a body for the Tucker sedan, based on Tucker's notions, and the fruit of his labor was a four-door that looks like several early-Fifties designs but for its center headlight. In other words, it was somewhat advanced for its day, but hardly a leap forward.

[randywebb]

So, the Tucker was unsafe at any speed....

[norustscott]

Originally posted by randywebb
So, the Tucker was unsafe at any speed....

... in the hands of a idiot.

[island911]

Originally posted by pmillikin
Tuckers are air cooled. If I remember correctly the powerplant is a helicopter engine.
Now if porsche made helicopter engines.... a call to Oliver Stone is in order.

Porsche did make helicopter engines. . . .thru adapting one of his VW designs, IIRC . .. ~1960, Military. See "Excellence was Expecteded"

[randywebb]

BTW, Scott ad I are commenting on Ralph Nader's book about the safety problems of the Corvair, "Unsafe At Any Speed." The problem is that most drivers ARE idiots - hence the high accident rate. It definitely made for a wild ride, and I bet the Tucker did too. If Porsche took years to tame the 911 with all us fabulous experts at the wheel, think what happens when ordinary "A'murikins" get plunked down in a Detroit oversteer wagon....

[dimps8]

The 356/912 engine was also made for the military, called industrial engines. Same internals except for flat top pistons used to lower the compression.