Over a decade of searching for answers on this car have yielded only more questions. Previously seen on American Pickers, the origins of this 1931 Piece Arrow Land Speed Car still remain shrouded in mystery.
The present owner of the car, James McLynas is offering $1,000 to anyone who can provide verifiable information about the cars origins, especially if they can prove the Tucker connection.
James believes it was built by Preston Tucker during the period he worked for Pierce Arrow from 1930-1933, and built in Indianapolis through his numerous car connections and builders in that area. It was built with an original body made of plastic (potentially the first plastic car ever built) and with state of the art highly advanced aerodynamics with a swept slab sided body design. Tucker was pitching plastics to the military during this same time period.
Tucker was big into racing, was great friends and later business partners with Harry Miller, who lived and breathed aerodynamics. They build ten Indy 500 cars for Ford together in 1935. Tucker was at Indy for a month each year around race time. Tucker was also there and with all of the Ab Jenkins stuff going on and there was talk about aerodynamics for the Jenkins speed runs and Pierce would not budge.
James thinks this car served multiple purposes for Tucker; Show his bosses how his car could beat the V12 runs of Jenkins with a straight 8 using only aerodynamics. Show them what a "futuristic" car looks like. Kind of like the flying Wombat from the movie "The Young At Heart" and the 1936 Jimmy Stewart movie "Speed" with the streamliner land speed car.
Tucker had an aircraft parts business and this car is filled with aircraft parts and construction techniques. He also had a contract to build a fighter plane for the military in the late 30's as well and he always thought that if he could land a military contract his days would be set. He was pitching plastic to the military as an alternative material, so he could have been using this car as an example of that technology and application.
In James's opinion, the car was never built to break the ultimate speed record. Just like Ab Jenkins didn't break any ultimate speed records but he did break 24 other speed records with the Pierce Arrow that Tucker let him take to Bonneville in 1931.
You can follow along and see more photos of the car at the Facebook page James has made for it here: / piercearrowlandspeedre...
Additionally, if the plastic body itself is of interest to you, James found an article in Popular Mechanics from 1941 about another car with an early plastic body that was made much in the same way, which you can read about here: books.google.c...
Негізгі бет Mystery 1931 Pierce Arrow Land Speed Car, Built by Preston Tucker?
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