Tucker : The Man And His Dream Essay, Research Paper

Preston Tucker

Preston Tucker was a car-crazy kid who hung around auto speedways

and grew up to create an automobile Tucker that was years ahead of its

time. He was a man of pioneering spirit, ingenuity, and daring, who

revolutionized Detroit in the 1940s with his stunning car of tomorrow.

It was streamlined, futuristic, and fast the car every American dreamed of

owning, at a price most people could afford. When he wanted to start to

produce the car he faces a lot of barriers, an oligopoly.

In the movie Tucker, there are only a small number of firms. Like

Kaiser-Frazier Automotive Company and Ford Motor Company. Each of the

companies holds a large share and the action from each one may have a great

affect on the others. The product in this movie is car. Car is similar,

differentiated product and this is the characteristics of an oligopoly.

There are many problems when Tucker tries to produce his dream car. Since

his car is a new one, he needs to use a lot of advertising to promote it

in order to attract people to buy it. Like magazine, car shower, and TV.

When Tucker tried to produce his car, he faced many problems. First

he had the financial problem he needed $15 million to produce the bomber

engine. However, he did not have enough money, so he issued 4 million shares

to raise his money. Besides, retooling for a model change could cost $20

million and since his car was a new brand, Tucker was lack of support of

the big firms, so he needed a lot of money to advertise his car. Second,

Tucker’s company had to produce 100 cars as the outputs every day so that

he could make a balance. He also needed money to employ dealers and he

needed 800 dealers in his company. Third, he did not have enough resources

to make his cars. He only had 200 tons of steel and this was barely enough

for 200 cars. He needed more steel. He also had to spend $16 million to buy

a mill. Forth, since “Tucker Torpedo” was a new brand, many people were not

familiar with it. Some of them even did not know it. Thus, it might affect

the sales of “Tucker Torpedo” much. People also did not have confidence on

this car because they did not know that it us safety or not. Fifth, Tucker

did not have the technology to produce his car in a mass production.

Therefore, it could not achieve the economies of scale and the costs of

producing his car were very high. Lastly, there was a bad publicity which

depressed the stock from $5 to $2 a share. Tucker forced to close the plant

after finishing only 47 cars.

Everyone has their own dream, but not everyone can make their dream

come true. Because when you want to make the come true, you need to have a

lot of things to support you. Like money, technique, time, place, and people.

Tucker is a very good sample. Since he got money, place, and people. But he

does not have much technology on build a new car, the other thing is wrong

time. Since the market is oligopoly, so when you have a new thing, you need

to deal with the big company. When they know you can do a thing better than

them, then they will use any way to stop you or control you, they never let

you do it.