"Tiger Rag" (Motif)
Tucker can be heard singing "Hold that tiger! Hold that tiger!" whenever he's full of confidence and feeling like he's on top. These are the lyrics of one version of the Dixieland Jazz classic "Tiger Rag," and its appearance in the movie both situates us at a point in time when this would have been a popular song and gives us a sense of Tucker's rambunctiousness. The song catches on throughout the film, as other characters will sing it to egg Tucker on.
The T (Symbol)
Right after Tucker, in the midst of a freakout, tells his crew that he's going to be crucified at the Tucker car's unveiling event at the factory in Chicago, we see a "t" being lifted onto the factory's facade to spell "TUCKER." Of course, this "t" looks like a crucifix and is a sly joke about the threat that Tucker's own grandiose dreams will be the end of him.
Nikola Tesla (Allegory)
We glimpse a poster of Nikola Tesla in the halls of the courthouse right before Tucker gives his own closing statement. Tesla was an innovator and rival of Thomas Edison's, who was in direct competition with the more famous inventor to established AC electricity as the most widely used form of current. Tesla ultimately won, but his name was written out of the history books and many of his most radical dreams and inventions were suppressed by the FBI and US government, mirroring Tucker's own misfortunes as a scrappy visionary.
Rear Engine (Symbol)
The rear engine in the Tucker automobile symbolizes the radical way that Tucker wanted to overhaul the auto industry. He wanted to unseat the Big Three by totally rethinking the way that the American car should be built, and no element of it was quite as iconoclastic and meets with as much resistance in the film as that engine in the trunk.
The Trial (Allegory)
Coppola uses the courtroom scenes to as a stage for all of his gripes with power in American, and the trial becomes a wider allegory for how corporate America wields its influence to squash the little guy. He shows the slimy legal tactics and happy government collusion to squash innovation in the name of a status quo. When Tucker gives his closing statement in defense of the little guy, it's clear that Coppola is speaking a bit about himself, as a dreamer who tried to take on the Hollywood studio system and was instead crushed by it.
