Movie: Tucker – Preston Tucker Essay, Research Paper

Movie: Tucker – 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.