Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Tucker: The Man and His Dream is a 1988 drama set in Ypsilanti, Michigan, shortly after the Second World War. Preston Tucker, an engineer with a flair for showmanship, sets out to build a car far ahead of anything the established American manufacturers were producing at the time. To get it into existence he needs backing, a factory and a run of finished vehicles, and he assembles a small group of allies around him to raise the money. What he faces instead is resistance from the large Detroit automakers, whose influence reaches into politics and the press and who see his project as a threat to their business.

Francis Ford Coppola directed the film, the fourteenth of the twenty-six features he has directed, following Gardens of Stone and preceding New York Stories. Arnold Schulman and David Seidler wrote the screenplay, and Fred Roos, Fred Fuchs and Coppola produced. Jeff Bridges plays Tucker, with Joan Allen as his wife Vera, Martin Landau as his business partner Abe, and Frederic Forrest, Mako and Dean Stockwell among the credited cast of fifty-two.

Made for about 23 million US dollars, the film took roughly 20 million worldwide, less than its cost. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 7.2 out of 10 from forty-seven reviews, while on TMDB it sits at 6.7 out of 10 from 446 votes.