Wednesday, July 29, 2015

the most recent, and probably the very last, Tucker to be made from spare parts. #1052


The total number of Tucker 48s built (not including the Tin Goose prototype) has stood at 51:

 37 built and sold from the factory in Chicago,

13 completed after Tucker shut its doors, and one built from parts in the 1980s, #1051, which Chick DeLorenzo completed in the late 1980s using body #1054. 

Ezra Schlipf, who bought much of the contents of the Tucker factory at its bankruptcy auction in 1950, sold most of the parts necessary to build a whole car – the cowl, dash, seats, and chassis of car #1052; the front sheetmetal from car #1018 which was wrecked in 1948; NOS bumpers, front doors, quarter panels and decklid; and an engine and transmission – to Stan Gilliland, one of the co-founders of the Tucker club.

Gilliland never assembled the parts into a whole, though, and ended up selling the lot to Dick Kughn, who in turn sold it to Wayne Lensing, who had planned to use the parts to create an exhibit replicating the Tucker assembly line.


Schuler knew of Lensing’s parts collection,“I think my timing was just right,” Schuler said. “Wayne’s dream was getting a little harder to fulfill, so he decided to sell.”

So in the spring of 2010, Schuler sent the parts to get assembled by expert Martyn Donaldson.

http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2015/07/28/the-last-tucker-assembled-from-original-parts-to-make-its-public-debut/

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