Preston Tucker and Others

Can you imagine a world where people drive beautiful and unusual cars, created by designers prodigiously endowed with talent and imagination? Names like Preston Tucker, Carl Borgward and John DeLorean are hardly known today. Nevertheless, today's cars would be a lot different without their contributions to automotive engineering. Although the car is a technological and rational affair, it's the dreamers and eccentrics like these who have made the biggest contribution to the development of the industry; those who have had the ability to think beyond their time and conventions. Money doesn't drive progress in the car business - it is a passion for speed, and an obsession with mechanisms. Yet for many a dreamer, this passion has ended in fiasco. Misunderstood and pushed aside by their contemporaries, they have been forced to watch their dreams trampled underfoot. This book takes a look at the history of the car from a different angle, avoiding the mainstream moguls and telling a story about a man and his dream, and the like-minded people that came before and after him. Lavishly illustrated and intensively researched, it documents the making of some of the strangest and greatest cars of the past century. The main section is devoted to the unsung heroes of motoring, and the rest of the book shines a light on the many ingenious inventions we now take for granted. Let's show some respect to the dreamers. Our world wouldn't be so exciting without them.