The Tucker had Lincoln steering wheels and horn ring, but with Tuckers medallion button. That much I know because I owned a ’48 Continental.

I read that Alex had a Ford contact and they had 50 Lincoln steering wheels in inventory, but with slight defects that they were willing to give Tucker. That would be a 1942-1948 design. My 1948 Continental had a different, and better undoubtedly, material composition, because it was a translucent dark red.

In the photo, the color appears to vary slightly which may, or may not, be relevant. But, I also owned a 1940 Lincoln-Zephyr in 1952. As we know Henry tried to make everything out of soy beans, so by 1952 that steering wheel, which may have been infected with soy beans, looked like shrunken dog bone segments impaled on a steel armature and may well have been the same color and similar composition as this one shown, when new.

From Robert Pitchford’s certificate that he received from Tremulis, the flicking of ashes on a rendering indicated that it was the HOTTEST concept being shown. Here’s the tongue-in-cheek certificate and the beliefs for the Advanced Styling section at Ford in the mid-1950′s, written by none other than Alex Tremulis, and signed by Larry Wilson, A. Hammond, and George Walker:

While Alex was working for Ford in the 1960s, he persuaded Elwood Engle to start a project for a gyroscopically stabilized car. It was called Gyron. A 3/8 scale, operating model was built, that balanced the car on its front and rear wheel. (I wish I could post images here). Syd Mead was there at the time, and might have more info on this. Syd did some exciting renderings of the car to try to sell management on building a full size experimental model, but they would not go along.

1961 Ford Gyron

Although Alex did not have training in Aero Engineering and aerodynamics, he had aquired a pretty good feel for it, and tried to interest the company in aerodynamics at a time when economy was not a salable feature. During the early 1950′s, Alex came up with a 3/8 scale racer for the Mexican Road Races, called, appropriately, “Mexico.” I have company photos of that model. “Mexico” was tested in a wind tunnel, and found to have a very low drag coefficient, and did not lift at high speeds.

“Once when I was airbrushing a large rendering of a design concept, Alex Tremulis came into the studio. Alex was one of the classic characters of the car styling world, and a good friend of everyone. He was a great teacher and supporter of the new designers, and an inspiration to us all. This day he stood and looked at my rendering for a while, giving no indication as to what he thought of it. Then he took off his English tweed sport coat and threw it down on the floor. His handlebar mustache bounced as he jumped up and down on his jacket. I was stupefied and dismayed, thinking he disliked what I was doing. Then he smiled and said “I like it!” He shook his jacket, put it on, and left the room. If he was trying to add to his image of eccentricity, he certainly succeeded! Sometimes he would look down at someone’s rendering with no comment, then knock-off his cigar’s ashes onto the painting, and walk away. Enough said! Once while visiting Alex and his wife in their Ann Arbor apartment, Alex told of an encounter with the state police. Alex drove an MG TD sports car too, and although it had a little four-cylinder tractor engine and couldn’t stay with most American cars leaving stoplights, Alex managed to keep it close to top speed (maybe eighty) wherever he went. One day, Alex told us, he was stopped by a police patrol. Radar was not used then, but the policeman insisted that Alex was speeding. Alex told him that the MG, being much smaller than the other cars on the road, appeared to be traveling faster but was actually at the speed limit. This was a new story to the policeman, and thoroughly confused, he let Alex go. An example of Tremulis’ wonderful gift for Blarney. He also had good stories about driving Tucker prototypes around Chicago. Alex contributed to the styling of Preston Tucker’s rear-engine car that didn’t quite make it into production. Tremulis, like many of us designers, had always ben interested in aircraft, and when I worked at the consulting engineering group Sverdrup and Parcel, in St. Louis, I had noticed an advanced concept of a jet plane on the office wall. The signature was “Alex Tremulis.”

Alex had a gift for blarney, and, like many of us, exaggerated some of his his design contributions, but his creative enthusiasm rubbed off on all who knew him, and I consider him to be one of the most influential designers of the era.—John Samsen