"The car of tomorrow, today!"
The tagline for Preston Tucker's automobile first appears in a copy of Pic magazine after he takes an ad out for the car. There's an irony to the tagline, as the depicted car does not even exist when that ad is published. It is a "car of tomorrow" in every sense, including the fact that a prototype has yet to be built.
"Aww, what's the difference, 50 or 50 million? That's only machinery. It's the idea that counts, Abe. The dream."
Right after Tucker wins his federal court case, Abe laments to him that they only got to build 50 of the cars. Preston retorts with this line, showing us that the real triumph was that he achieved his dream of making the car, never mind all that stuff about rising to the top of an industry. Tucker made his dream into reality.
"He's not a Jap. He's an engineer."
Of course, during World War II, racism was rampant, especially against Japanese citizens who were being thrown into federal internment camps. When Tucker says this in response to one of his most trusted workers being called a slur, we know he's not just a man of virtue, but that the story is positing his own gutsiness as something that grows from his sense of virtue.
"How do they know they’re any good? They’re not even built yet."
Tucker says this to the soda jerk in the ice cream shop while looking at an article in Pic magazine about the Levitt homes. This is the very train of thought that leads to him planting drawings of his Tucker car in a future edition of Pic. Ironically, his cars will take a long time to get built, and by the time they're ready, the public won't even care if they're any good.
"People don’t buy stock. They buy people they can trust, or people they believe they can."
This comes as Abe is telling Preston that the Tucker company needs a chairman of the board who worked with one of the Big Three companies. It highlights a constant tension in the film between things like word and bond, and touches on the "cult of personality" phenomenon that both turns Tucker into an American hero and works against him when it comes to securing investor confidence in his company.
"Kid, you are the design department."
When Alex Tremulis shows up on the Tucker family's doorstep asking for a design job, this is what Preston tells him. It demonstrates Preston's bluster and great capacity for risk. It proves a wise decision for Tucker to hire Alex, but this exact impulsiveness is the tendency that will ultimately doom the Tucker company and land Preston in court.
"If Benjamin Franklin were alive today, he’d be thrown in jail for sailing a kite without a license!"
As the stinger during Preston's closing statement in the courtroom, this quote perfectly encapsulates the injustice of Senator Ferguson and the Big Three using a bunk SEC investigation to shut down the Tucker automobile company. Tucker paints a grim picture of America's attitude towards innovation and the little guy, making for a moral to the story that's hard to forget.
"I went into business with you for one reason, Tucker, to make money. How was I to know that if I got too close to you I’d catch your dreams?"
Earlier in this piece of dialogue, Abe says that his mother used to tell him "don't get too close to people, you'll catch their dreams," and later he figured out she was saying, "you'll catch their germs." But Karatz uses the misheard version to show Tucker how much he admires his friend and business partner, and we quickly realize that the emotional core of this film was Abe Karatz all along. It was he who was so skeptical of Tucker in the beginning that he dismissed the car outright and, later, he who was Tucker's biggest supporter and helped him deal with the heat from the FBI. By this point in the film, he's practically a member of the Tucker family.
"The entire Big Three is guilty of criminal negligence, and if it were up to me they would be tried and convicted of manslaughter."
This is the line that dooms Tucker. He says this when presenting his company to a group of government bureaucrats while trying to secure the factory in Chicago. Word of this statement gets back to Senator Ferguson, who uses it against Tucker and is ultimately compelled to destroy Tucker's business. The line shows just why Tucker is so intent to make his car work, and how keen he is on taking down the Big Three in the process.
"If they want headlines, I’ll give ‘em a beaut!"
Tucker shouts this when he's taking one of the finished Tuckers out of the factory and about to take the police on a high-speed chase that will culminate with him turning himself in at the station for the fraud charges brought by the SEC. But it also functions as Tucker's general ethos. He loves innovating and he dreams big, but the thing Tucker is apparently most addicted to is making headlines. Even when cornered, he's hungry for more.
