The story of Preston Tucker, the maverick car designer and his ill-fated challenge to the auto industry with his revolutionary car concept.

Based on a true story. Shortly after World War II, Preston Tucker is a grandiose schemer with a new dream, to produce the best cars ever made. With the assistance of Abe Karatz and some impressive salesmanship on his own part, he obtains funding and begins to build his factory. The whole movie also has many parallels with director Coppola's own efforts to build a new movie studio of his own.—Reid Gagle

A semi-fictionalized account of engineer Preston Tucker's quest to manufacture his revolutionary car of the future is told. The present in this case is WWII, his want being to supply what he will see being the pent up demand of the American consumer in the post-war era. His design takes into account many of the deficiencies he sees in what is being churned out by the Big Three car manufacturers. Beyond his inner circle of ardent supporters including his loving family who assist him in his dream out of his barn in rural Ypsilanti, Michigan, he hires Abe Karatz to help with the financing and administrative plans, Abe who admits that unlike Tucker's inner circle that he is doing this job for the money. While Abe eventually buys into the dream, they discover that much of the public also buys into that dream in Tucker's role of publicity in order to raise money. However, they will also discover that there are others internally who do only see dollar signs in doing things the way they've always been done by the Big Three. But what may be the biggest obstacle for Tucker and his group to succeed is the opposition by the Big Three, who see Tucker as a major threat to their way of life and who have some powerful people in their proverbial back pockets.—Huggo