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.