The Tucker Factory: Still Standing In Chicago

Last June, as some of you regular readers may recall, I attended the CLC West of the Lake Region car show at Ettleson Cadillac-Buick in Chicagoland. I met up with several of my friends there, including Ron Schweitzer, Andrew Bobis, Mike Risatti and Jim Smith. Smith was late. But he made up for it. If you missed my walk-and-talk car show reports, you can check them out here and here.

As we were wandering amongst the Eldorados and Rivieras, somehow the subject of the Tucker came up. Jim’s grandfather was involved with Tucker back then, and I’m hoping he will do a post right here sometime to tell us more about that! But anyway, I mentioned during the course of that conversation that I’d heard the factory was still there, albeit divided up into different uses. Jim said, “Yep, it’s still there. in fact, it’s only about ten minutes from here.” “Really?” “Yeah. You wanna go check it out?” Heck yes!

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Press Day At The 2019 Chicago Auto Show!

The Chicago Auto Show is an institution. I attended my first in 1988. I was in third grade, and my parents took me up. It was a revelation for eight year old me. Cars, cars everywhere! Two floors of cars! And concepts, and free brochures! Good Lord, this must be what heaven is like!

1988 Volvo 780 coupe. Yes, that’s me.

Suffice it to say, I was hooked. And while we didn’t attend every single year, we went most years between the late ’80s and late ’90s. There was always something to see. And we’d wander around Chicago as well. It was fun, being in the big city for the weekend.

Ferrari 512TR, 1992 Chicago Auto Show

The most recent year I attended was 2015, when my brother and I took a weekday off from work and drove up for the day. Since then, the weather has conspired to be exceptionally nasty, so as to prevent my willingness to make the three hour drive.

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