The Tin Goose, the first Tucker, at the Swigart Museum

The maroon fastback on the floor of the William E. Swigart, Jr. Automobile Museum at 12031 William Penn Highway, Huntingdon, is the first automobile the Tucker Corporation ever built. The Historic American Engineering Record documented it as HAER PA-652. Its measurements date from October 2014, and its written history was prepared by Casey T. Maxon of the Historic Vehicle Association, with help from Preston T. Rose and historian John Tucker, and carries dates through December 2020.

The survey says the car was built between January and June 1947 at the Tucker plant in Chicago. Metal shaper Herman Ringling and his team formed the steel body from renderings by stylist Alex Tremulis, using a 1942 Oldsmobile as a donor for sheet metal, parts and frame members. Tremulis named it the Tin Goose for its all steel body and the heavy lead solder used to smooth the panels. Hours before its unveiling in June 1947 the aluminum suspension arms broke under the car's weight and mechanics built a new set from copper; the fuel injection could not be set up, so the engine ran on a carburetor and barely idled. It was driven onto the stage anyway, before more than 3,000 people.

It went on to Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago for display and press events in 1947 while the Securities and Exchange Commission scrutinized the company's stock offering. The survey counts thirty-seven cars built before the plant closed and fifty-one Tucker automobiles completed in all, and Preston Tucker and seven associates were cleared of all charges on January 22, 1950. The Tin Goose was sold at the liquidation auction in October 1950, later sat on blocks on Lester Schaefer's property in Steelton, and was bought by John Lemmo of Peninsula, Ohio, in the early 1970s and restored by 1984. William E. Swigart, Jr. bought it at a Kruse auction in Auburn, Indiana, in August 1998 for $250,000.

The survey found the car no longer carries its original 589 cubic inch engine; by the SEC investigation of 1948 it had the 335 cubic inch engine, adapted from a Franklin helicopter engine, that went into the production cars. In 2018 students and faculty at the Pennsylvania College of Technology rebuilt its brakes and fuel system before it was shown at Pebble Beach that August. Weighed on racing scales on October 13, 2014, it came to 4,306 pounds.

The Tin Goose got its name from Tremulis due to its all steel body construction and heavy application of lead solder to smooth out the panels.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, 1947 Tucker '48 Prototype, written data pages, HAER PA-652 data pages, page 6 · character 10,975 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full

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