Preston Tucker built one of the most famous failed automobile companies in American history, producing just 51 completed Tucker ’48s before the Chicago factory collapsed amid financial trouble and a federal investigation. Every completed factory car was a four-door sedan. Tucker never advertised, cataloged or publicly introduced a convertible. Yet today there is one. And it’s been for sale for a long, long time.
Finished in Waltz Blue with a tan interior, the car identified as Tucker No. 1057 has the familiar Tucker center headlight and rear-mounted Franklin flat-six, but its roof is gone, its windshield has been shortened and its doors have been lengthened to transform the radical four-door sedan into an elegant two-door convertible. It is currently offered for sale in Texas for $3.5 million, advertised as the only Tucker convertible prototype in existence. The listing shows just 10 miles on the odometer.
The fascinating part isn’t that someone eventually built a convertible from Tucker parts. That much is obvious. The mystery is when the transformation began — and whose idea it was. Supporters believe No. 1057 was a secret experimental convertible Tucker Corporation started before shutting down. Some prominent Tucker historians argue that the surviving evidence points to something very different.
Was Tucker Actually Building It?
There is no question that No. 1057 has real Tucker history. It was one of the unfinished cars associated with the factory when production ended. Designer Alex Tremulis was working on a body identified as No. 57 as part of development for a proposed 1949 Tucker, and surviving photographs show an unfinished Tucker with a significantly enlarged opening for a wraparound rear window. The disputed question is whether Tucker also intended to turn that car into a convertible.
The car’s supporters say yes. Restorer Justin Cole and Benchmark Classics acquired the unfinished No. 57 project in 2008 after it had spent decades with previous owners. They collected affidavits and interviews supporting the claim that a convertible project existed at Tucker. Particularly important is the testimony of respected restorer Al Prueitt, who said he saw the rolling chassis and sheet-metal components in 1966 and remembered No. 57 having a reinforced frame. The convertible’s current historical presentation argues that Tucker and outside engineers had strengthened the chassis specifically because removing the roof compromised its rigidity.
But there is a major problem: no surviving Tucker factory document has conclusively identified No. 1057 as a convertible prototype. The Tucker Automobile Club of America previously said it could not authenticate the convertible claim, while critics have pointed to Tremulis’ recollection that No. 57 was being modified for the wraparound rear glass of the planned 1949 sedan. Tucker historian and former club archivist Larry Clark has also argued that much of the structure beneath the completed convertible was reconstructed later and that the changes have not been found in surviving Tucker engineering records.
More Than 5,000 Hours Finished What Tucker Left Behind
What exists today was unquestionably completed long after the Tucker factory disappeared. Cole acquired the unfinished project in December 2008 and his team reportedly spent more than 5,000 hours completing it. Missing pieces had to be fabricated, while authentic Tucker components were sourced, including a proper Franklin-Tucker flat-six engine and a Cord-derived transmission. The finished car debuted publicly at the Keels & Wheels Concours in Texas in May 2009 and was later sold to the private owner who still owns it today.
That makes the word “restoration” unusually complicated. If Tucker really began building a convertible prototype, Cole’s team essentially completed an abandoned factory experiment roughly 60 years later. If the factory never intended No. 1057 to lose its roof, then the finished car is instead a modern interpretation constructed from the remains of a genuine experimental Tucker. Either way, it contains real Tucker components and is based around material connected to one of the company’s unfinished cars. What remains unsettled is whether the convertible itself can legitimately be considered Preston Tucker’s creation.
That uncertainty hasn’t stopped owners from placing extraordinary values on it. The car has been advertised for millions of dollars several times over the years, and it is once again available today at $3.5 million. For comparison, authenticated Tucker ’48 sedans routinely rank among the most valuable postwar American automobiles, with exceptional examples bringing seven figures. A genuine factory-built one-off convertible would theoretically occupy an entirely different category. And that is what makes No. 1057 more interesting than simply calling it the world’s only Tucker convertible. There is no second car to compare it with, no production brochure to consult and no surviving factory blueprint that settles the argument. Tucker disappeared before the company could show the world what came next. More than 75 years later, someone is asking $3.5 million for what might be the answer (but probably not). That said, there is still one missing Tucker sedan.
