How others will see it. The innocent will be shocked to learn the truth about American way. It isn't about the better mousetrap built in a garage. It's about big business pulling economic and political levels to subdue the competition. Money talks, and if you don't listen, you'll get squashed.
Of course, there is a positive side as well. There is room for the dreamer in American culture. Tucker is charismatic. He assembles a team, he never gives up. And he succeeds. The wonder car is built. It will never be pumped out from a factory by the millions, but the prototypes proclaim what a late 1940s automobile should be.
The viewer will likely catch Tucker's enthusiasm, and root for him as he fights corporate and governmental evil, as well as the passage of time, to produce the life-saving, futuristic car. If the film is not as popular as (for example) Coppola's Godfather films, it's not because it's partly true. It's because the shifting allegiances of organized crim are more compelling than a bittersweet Horatio Alger story.
How I felt about it. Coppola still knew how to direct in 1988. The production always hits the right note. There are never talking heads and a still camera. Instead, the actors are walking, gesturing, and the camera is moving. Things are always happening. And yet the story flows well, from one scene to the next.
Characters are simplified, of course, always be necessity. The veteran auto executives and his board of cronies are pre-ordained to become villains, as is the cunning and powerful Senator from Michigan (Lloyd Bridges, father of our star Jeff). Tucker's wife Vera (Joan Allen) is perpetually loyal, as is his son (Christian Slater) and reluctant financeer Abe (Martin Landau).
The scope of a conventional two-hour film only allow true complexity in its central character Tucker. He's charismatic, eager, ambitious, obsessive, and perhaps too optimistic for his own good. He tooks bad new badly, but only for a moment, and then the brassy confidence returns undiminished.
Coppola obviously intends Tucker as an American allegory for Franklin, Morse, Bell, Edison, Ford, and even Bill Gates. Tucker's refusal to surrender authority (sell out) to The System, however, ensures his underdog status. And since underdogs usually lose, Tucker's fate is that of a beautiful loser, always a hero in Hollywood.