This is such a great movie about Preston Thomas Tucker who dreamt he could build a better automobile than the Big 3 automakers of Detroit. The car that he built was a beautiful piece of machinery, sleek and stylish. He was concerned about improving the saftety standards of the automobile because safety was a cost that the Big 3 did not want to incur. Thus he added seatbelts, a pop out windshied and a padded center row bar. What's even more amazing the car that he built would have given us 20 miles per gallon and that was 1948. The Big 3 automakers with the help of government and the media SHUT DOWN Tucker Motor Corp. Preston Tucker's charater is played by Jeff Bridges. I highly recommend that you watch this movie! The movie clip I am sharing is the end of the movie where Preston Tucker gives his closing argument in court. He was being charged with fraud by the Securities Exchange Commission. I have typed a transcript of his closing argument. His words were very prophetic!
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Thank you your Honor. Thank you Senator. The prosecution claims that I never had any intention at all of building any cars. That all I wanted was to take the money and run. If you decide that they are right, well I am guilty. But according to the law if I tried to make the cars, even if they weren't any good, even if I didn't make any. But if you believe that I tried, well then I am not guilty. Because it is not against the law thank God to be wrong or stupid. Which I was both building that prototype. But what nobody has said through this whole trial is that after the prototype I built the car that I said I would and there are fifty of them right now parked down there on the Street. All the judge has to do is let you walk down there and take a ride in one of them and that's it the trial is over. Will you allow the jury please just look out the window. You can see them from here your honor. Your honor I am on trial whether I intended to build the car or not.
When I was a boy I used to read all about Edison and the Wright Brothers and Mr. Ford. They were my heroes. Rags to riches that's not just the name of a book, that's what this country was all about. We invented the FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM. Where anybody no matter who he was, where he came from, what class he belonged to, if he came up with a BETTER IDEA about anything there is NO LIMIT to how far he could go. I grew up a generation too late I guess, because now the way the system works the LONER, the DREAMER, the CRACKPOT who comes up with some crazy idea that everybody laughs at that later turns out to revolutionize the world he's squashed from above before he even gets his head out of the water. Because the BUREAUCRATS they'd rather KILL A NEW IDEA then let it rock the boat. If Benjamin Franklin were alive today he'd be thrown in jail for sailing a kite without a license. It's true. We're all puffed up with ourselves today because we invented the bomb. We dropped the. We beat the daylights out of the Japanese and the Nazi's.
But if BIG BUSINESS closes the door on the LITTLE GUY WITH THE NEW IDEA, where not only closing the door ON PROGRESS but we're sabotaging everything that we fought for. Everything that the country stands for. One day we're going to find ourselves at the bottom of the heap instead of king of the hill having no idea how we got there buying our radios and our cars from our former enemy's. I don't believe that is going to happen. I can't believe it because if I ever stop believing in the plain old common horse sense of the American people there is no way I can get out of bed in the morning. Thank you.
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