The story of a car that barely was that appeared in Collectible Automobile® magazine has won a second award. “Toward the Tucker: Creating Preston Tucker’s Bid for Glory” is the 2019 winner of the Carl Benz Award presented by the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH).
Tucker Article from Collectible Automobile® Tops Class in Judging
Penned by Karl Ludvigsen, the account of the inspiration and engineering for the revolutionary but ultimately doomed 1948 Tucker appeared in the December 2018 issue of CA, a Consumer Guide® Automotive companion publication devoted to motoring history. The Benz Award is the SAH’s top honor for magazine writing, and is given for excellence in the presentation of automotive history published in the previous calendar year. The award is made jointly to the author and the publication.
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With this latest award, articles from the bimonthly magazine have garnered 12 Benz prizes since 2000. Another seven have been accorded the “honorable mention” Benz Award of Distinction. Earlier this year, the Tucker article was presented a gold medallion and “Best-in-Category” trophy in the second-annual Automotive Heritage Awards competition.
The Tucker piece was Ludvigsen’s first-ever work for Collectible Automobile®, but the Michigan native who now lives in England has enjoyed a celebrated career as an automotive journalist and historian that goes back more than 60 years. He is a multiple winner of the SAH’s Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot Award for best automotive-history book, and in 2002 the society named him a “Friend of Automotive History” for contributions to the field. Ludvigsen also earned a Benz Award of Distinction in 2000 for an article in another publication.
The award was announced on October 11 during the SAH’s annual meeting and awards dinner at the Hershey Country Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The not-for-profit organization, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2019, claims a global membership of more than 900. According to the society’s website, it exists to “support the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images” related to the history of motorized land transportation and to promote the publishing and teaching of automotive history.
Collectible Automobile® marked its 35th anniversary in 2019. It is published by Publications International, Ltd. of Morton Grove, Illinois.
Ludvigsen photo courtesy of Society of Automotive Historians
Collectible Automobile Webpage
Collectible Automobile Tucker Article
