Preston Tucker died on this date in 1956, at the age of 53. We remember him for the car that bore his name, the legal battles that dogged him for years, and the slick-talking dreamer who cut years off his life trying to sell the world on a three-eyed dreamboat powered by a helicopter engine and whose only atonement in life was being played by Jeff Bridges.

But Tucker also built an armored car.

The year was 1937, as a breathless announcer shouts off-screen somewhere. Tucker, our intrepid adventurer, was laid up in an Indianapolis hospital after having his appendix removed. War was looming over the Atlantic. "What if," thought Tucker, "I built a high-speed armored tank? Surely there'd be interest in that!"

The result was the Tucker Tiger, a narrow combat vehicle that resembled a Bantam Jeep up front with a big wagon-like compartment. (Squint, and it looks kind of like an olive-drab Jeepster Commando.) It weighed in at 10,000 pounds (a full ton lighter than existing vehicles), was entirely bulletproof, featured air conditioning and the "Tucker Turret," whose 360-degree powered dome later found its way from PT boats and LCM-8 Mike Boats to B-17 and B-29 bombers. And in true Tucker fashion, he became wrapped up in lawsuits for stolen patents.

(One wonders if by applying "Tucker" to all of his inventions, Preston sought a lasting Trump-like reverence -- or if things went wrong, the ignominy of the next "Acme" from a Tex Avery cartoon.)

Just one prototype was built. Initially, Tucker had planned to sell to the Dutch, who wanted something to traverse muddy ground. In 1940 he attempted to broker a deal, but by then Holland was embroiled in its own troubles. Afterwards, he tried to sell it to the American government, but the film claims the Tiger's top speed -- which blew Army specifications out of the water -- ran afoul of politicians, who believed, "at the time, it was the opinion that a combat car shouldn't be driven over 35 miles per hour," as the video above attests.

Some say it would have been great had the Tucker Torpedo survived, and we'd have spent 10 years of this nation's history whisking across the Eisenhower Freeway System in air-cooled, safety-enhanced comfort. We disagree. It would have been much more interesting to see the Tucker Tiger, the Bugatti Veyron of armored personnel carriers, valiantly defending Rotterdam with American firepower at 100 mph.

Tucker's legacy would have been one of war, but like the recently departed Kalashnikov, it would have been a legacy as muddled, controversial and starkly brilliant as, well, what really happened.

Image from Hemmings

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