Vanderbilt Cup Races

Back in May of this year I was contacted by the great granddaughter of H.H. Budds. His company was a supplier to the Tucker corporation. They produced what was described as the Tucker “desk set,” which is now more commonly known as the Tucker ashtray. She informed me that while going through the barn at her mother’s house, they discovered some molds and ashtrays that were from the time when her great grandfather was manufacturing items for the Tucker corporation. She wanted to know if I was interested in these items as they were preparing to sell the contents of the barn. Needless to say, I was delighted to learn of this and expressed my interest in the items along with learning of the history she could provide.

At this point I enlisted the participation of Mike and Sean Tucker. We have worked closely together in the past and their geographic proximity to the items was ideal. I sent them some pictures and their adventure began.  From here Mike Tucker will tell you the story from his first-hand account.

Mike Tucker: Several months ago, I received a group of photos via text message that I will never forget.  It was a Saturday afternoon and I was at Ida Automotive working on Tucker #1034, wondering like I always do how I got so lucky to get the chance to work on another one of my great grandfathers’ cars with my father, my twin brother Sean, Rob and Bob Ida, Russ Montelbano, Arthur Zygnerski, and Artie Wright.  The text was from another member of our team in Michigan, Mark Lieberman.  The message had no text, but I believed I knew exactly what I was looking at.  The images showed several old and extremely dirty molds which appeared to be the scale of the metal Tucker cars used on the Tucker desk set.

I called Mark who confirmed my suspicion and said the molds were pulled from a barn in an original shipping crate along with a few examples of the desk sets themselves that had never been shipped to the Tucker corporation.  There was also a folder full of paperwork that said “Tucker” but the specific contents of the folder were unknown.  Over the next week we learned more information about the items which were located in New Canaan, Connecticut in the possession of the descendants of a gentlemen name Harold “H. H.” Budds.  Mr. Budds owned Budds Aero Castings and produced the desk sets for the Tucker Corporation in 1948.  Very soon thereafter my brother Sean and I were on our way to New Canaan, CT to bring back the lot and learn more than we ever could have imagined about the history of the Tucker desk sets.

The Tucker desk sets were one of the many promotional items Tucker dealers could have purchased from the Tucker Corporation for use in promoting the Tucker 48.  The desk sets are extremely rare; through original company documentation we believe Budds Aero Castings produced somewhere between 1,730 and 2,230 of the desk sets in two different colors, red and gold.  There may have been a small quantity of black desk sets as well, but we have not been able to confirm that beyond one comment made in a March 1948 document from the Tucker Corporation. 

We believe there were at least three configurations of the desk sets in the two colors previously mentioned: the early maroon painted cars, the early gold-plated cars, and the later style gold-plated cars.  We also know of at least two different version of the desk set base, one which included the “Tucker” script and one that did not.  The inclusion of the script is discussed in original Tucker Corporation documentation and we believe it was added at some point during the short production run of the desk sets.

Upon arriving in New Canaan, Sean and I pulled into an old farm house with a large barn behind it and were greeted by one of Harold Budd’s descendants.  The property was Harold Budds’ personal residence and was being sold.  Harold Budds passed away many year ago and his wife had recently passed away as well.  We had a long discussion about the Tucker desk set project and were told that the molds, desk sets, and paperwork were some of the only items that Harold Budds and his wife had told the family to always make sure were safely accounted for.  As we have found with many of the Tucker dealers and suppliers that we have been able to correspond with, Mr. Budds truly believed in Preston Tucker’s vision and his revolutionary automobile.   He even joined the staff of the Tucker corporation as an “executive consultant to the president” in February of 1948.  Anyone lucky enough to have a copy of issue number three of the original Tucker Topics publication can see his photo and employment announcement on the second to last page of the newsletter.  Because of his faith in my great-grandfather’s vision, Mr. Budds made sure the items used during the production of the desk sets survived for more than 70 years.  

After concluding our conversation, we were in for one last surprise when we were told that the original Budds Aero Castings building still existed and was only two miles away.  Sean and I jumped in the car to visit the site and were amazed to find that is in fact still there.  We were not able to get as close as we would have liked to given the installation of a modern perimeter fence.  That later turned out to be a huge benefit when a black bear emerged from the woods and ran towards the dumpster behind the building while we were exploring the site!  Luckily, he was more interested in his afternoon snack than our Tucker adventure.

Upon returning home we examined the lot and put together what we thought was the chronological progression of the original molds.  We very carefully brushed the dust from their surfaces finding many different subtle variations along the way.  Those variations helped to explain our longstanding question of why we have seen so many different versions and configurations of the desk set.  We then carefully unpacked and cleaned up the original desk sets themselves, finding a few with nearly perfect plating and one we believe may have been an early prototype.  The big surprise of the lot was the documentation as Mr. Budds appeared to have kept every piece of correspondence between Budds Aero Castings and the Tucker corporation.  The documentation begins on January 9th, 1948 with a letter from the Tucker corporation committing tooling money to Budds Aero Castings, and it ends on September 20th, 1948 with a letter from Budds Aero Castings to the Tucker corporation regarding the SEC raid of their facility.  It included the original purchase order from the Tucker corporation for the desk sets, shipping documentation from both facilities, correspondence on the many variations of the desk sets, and planned distribution information.

The trip and discovery were certainly one of the highlights of our Tucker experiences and something we will never forget! 

***Some of these artifacts, molds and documents will be on permanent display at the AACA Museum. The 3 of us have donated them to the museum for their Tucker archives and continued promotion of the Tucker story.