In a week crowded with coveted automobiles at Valley auctions, a convertible
linked to the nearly forgotten Tucker Corp. has collectors buzzing about the car's mysterious past.
Is it a long-lost convertible prototype of the 1948 Tucker? Or is it a reproduction car, carefully assembled using salvaged Tucker parts?
Owner Justin Cole is presenting the car he restored as the only convertible built by Preston Tucker, the auto-company founder whose story was told in Francis
Ford
Coppola's 1988 film "Tucker: The Man and His Dream."
Cole calls the sleek, blue convertible the "Holy Grail of Tuckers" and hopes it will fetch up to $3.5 million at the storm-ravaged Russo and Steele auction in Scottsdale, which is set to resume on Sunday. Bidders may be wary. Critics, including Tucker's daughter-in-law, Shirley Tucker, 82, of Scottsdale, are calling the open-top Tucker a fake.
"There never was a convertible," she said. "All the cars were the same, just different colors."
Tucker's late husband, Preston Tucker Jr., worked with his father in producing 50 Tucker sedans in a Chicago auto plant before it was shuttered in 1949.
The disputed Tucker is the latest and perhaps loudest dustup over the provenance of classic cars at this week's five auto auctions.
The Barrett-Jackson Auction Co. had its own authenticity and title issues with a 1958 Chevrolet Impala linked to the late musician Buddy Holly and a 1971 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda that Beach Boys guitarist Al Jardine is selling.
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