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Tiger Ident

C

claf

Donation Time
Not looking to cheat on the authentication but my new to me Tiger has some anomaly's I don't understand. It has the bung for changing the last spark plug, has the trap door for fuel pump access. Has a flat trunk floor (no stand up spare). BUT cobbed up motor mounts, butchered sheet metal and replaced radiator. Front floor is all cut up with a Hurst shifter. It was sold as a titled '67 with a '66 serial number and '66 chrome trim and grille. I want to believe it's real but feel ill at ease with some aspects of it. How many of the issues above are deal breakers ? Thanks, Bob

DOESN'T have a flat trunk floor, the base which holds the bottom of the spare is rusted off and a patch is covering the viod.
 
alpine_64

alpine_64

Donation Time
Bob,

Where are you located? An easy way to asses the car is to have it TAC'd, they will tell you if the car shows signs of jensen manufacture.

The year of title vs VIN may not be an issue, if the car was not sold till later the title will be different to the year of manufacture.

You can browse the www.rootes1.com site for some simple checks, or better still email norman miller with your VIN and Jal and see what he may/may not know about the car.
 
C

claf

Donation Time
I'm not in a position to have it evaluated at this time. This car is a serious rebuilding project and I am trying to decide if it is authentic before I invest untold dollars and hours. Windshield sticker indicates it hasn't been driven on the road since 1988 so obviously it needs everything. It came with a "truckload" of spares so I have duplicates of a lot of stuff.

Resulting from a previous posting on the British car forum I was contacted by a person claiming to have owned the car back in the 70's and the description he gave me matches up with some of the oddities in this car. I'm just trying to find out if any of the items mentioned below were absolutely incorrect. While I wouldn't mine driving a well done Alger I wouldn't like to be into one for $25K.

Thanks, Bob

I am in Mass, not exactly a hot bed of Tiger activity. I've only seen two in the last several years at semi-local cruise nights.
 
alpine_64

alpine_64

Donation Time
Bob,

I think the best possible thing you can do to eleviate your concerns is to contact norm miller. He will probably ask you to send photos of certain parts of the car and can give you at least a certain amount of information one way or another.
 
65beam

65beam

Donation Time
tiger

why don't you post some photos of the car. especially the front inner fender wells and the entire engine compartment. also the trunk area, trans tunnel and battery box area. there are many on this site that know what to look for. i say it again. there are many TAC'ed algers.
 
RootesRooter

RootesRooter

Donation Time
On the title issue, it wasn't unusual for Tigers to sit on the showroom floor until a subsequent year. I've run across lots of IA's titled as '67s.
 
P

Paul A

Alpine Registry Curator
Platinum Level Sponsor
65beam said:
there are many TAC'ed algers.
Click to expand...

Hi Bob

That's a pretty strong indictment of the TAC process. On what basis are you making the claim? I think it is remotely possible that there may be one or two but "many"? I'm skeptical.

As to the title issue - my MK IA was titled as a '67.
 
alpine_64

alpine_64

Donation Time
Paul,

It's bob's favourite stirring comment, Perhaps there are some, there are people who do know a lot about tigers.. but i doubt there could be many.. and given who is saying it.. well it's just his way of getting kicks.

if someone has gone to the effort of reproducing certain details on a car to sneak it pass TAC they would have done it specifically for that purpose, because they are not always important things, nor parts; its methodology.

You can have a TAC'd car with many non tiger parts on it, many variations from stock, but its the method of manufature of the main parts of the body they give it its jensen "rootes"
 
65beam

65beam

Donation Time
tiger

paul,
i stand by my statement. it can and has been done many times in the last 35 to 40 years. if you ever took a look at a bare metal alpine and a bare metal tiger side by side you would see the differences. anybody with common sense would see the differences. i know many of the differences. a good body man could duplicate very easily. jenson welds were very sloppy. up until the last few years there wasn't a problem with a rebody. a good rebody in the 70's and 80's would bring bigger dollars on the west coast versus the selling price here. tigers were selling for 2500 to 3500 at that time. i was buying good alpines for less than half of the cost of a tiger at that time. most tigers had been bent and driven to death but there were many alpines that were much better so they were used for rebody of a tiger. all tigers were once an alpine body that i believe was sent to jenson minus the trans tunnel, inner fender braces and a few other minor items such as the small triangle braces under the bulkhead. an alpine has four,a tiger has two. it's also very easy to use a tiger to restore an alpine. we're doing that at the present time. my series 4 now has tiger rear fenders on it. we used MK2 fenders so we didn't have to weld up the side moulding holes. what is the term for my car now that it has tiger parts on it? those that don't believe that it has been done are either in the dark or are newbies that believe everything some tiger owners say. if you have the money to spend anything can be done and done correctly.
 
A

agmason

Donation Time
"i stand by my statement. it can and has been done many times in the last 35 to 40 years"

65beam,


Its time to put up or shut up. You make the same claim over and over yet you cannot provide one bit of evidence to back up your claim. Well beam, the gauntlet has been thrown down in your direction, are you going to pick it up?
 
A

agmason

Donation Time
65beam,

"it's also very easy to use a tiger to restore an alpine. we're doing that at the present time. my series 4 now has tiger rear fenders on it. we used MK2 fenders so we didn't have to weld up the side moulding holes."

I use fenders from a Harrington Sunbeam to repair the fenders on my Tiger. It works very well and I highly recommend Harrington body parts for restoring a Tiger.


" what is the term for my car now that it has tiger parts on it?"

If you are doing the work yourself, junk. Otherwise, foolishness.
 
65beam

65beam

Donation Time
tiger

george,
i thought you knew better.

andy,
the tigers that i have owned were used for things such as repairs of other cars including alpines. they were worn out. i could show you a tiger that is beyond being repaired due to crash damage and is parked in a garage. came from the east coast some time ago. remember that i have spent all but 14 years of my life in sunbeams. i have owned lots of sunbeams. i don't like driving an uncomfortable car so i don't drive a tiger. but i have driven some of the best of them in the past. trust me,if i wanted to drive one it would be in my garage. i have been a harrington owner for several decades. now there is a rare, very low production sunbeam. i own three at this time along with several other sunbeams. the wife was thinking about buying a street tiger ,but bought another project instead. our body man says he will personally look at any tiger the wife may think about buying since he's getting too old to do much more. when i called him from nevada last week, his comment was that he wasn't done with the alpine he's restoring now.

dude,
you will never understand what goes on. like owners from other countries you question everything that is done. you did it last week. such as asking why we didn't buy the lemans from ian earlier. we do what we want and to quote a member of my family,it's our money and we'll do what we want. i just bought a rebodied car. i have no problem with that. the reason being that it has an excellent body with only a couple very minor rust perforations. less work and time!

don't insult the capabilities of very good body men and don't always trust the views of tiger experts that can't or won't tell you how to repair a rusted tiger. they seem to believe they should be trashed rather than saved. objecting against a rebody is kind of like saying that the shortest distance between point A and point B is to go to point D & E before going to point B. a rebody using a car that is solid is only common sense. much better and much easier. that doesn't require a lot of common sense to understand. nobody seems to complain when a car goes thru an auction and sells for seven figures and they say it was rebodied at such and such time. the last time i looked there are many brit cars that you can buy complete new bodies for and also for american muscle cars. there also is a person capable of reproducing every part of a tiger. what is to keep someone from using his parts to build a complete body? what is it about a few tiger owners that think these cars are not to be switched around? i will not disclose anything i may know about rebodies since it really is nobody's business what owners do with their money and their cars. ???????????
 
65beam

65beam

Donation Time
tiger

dude,
i don't do the body work on our cars. i do all the assembly work of the car after i get the painted body back from the shop. our body man knows how to restore sunbeams to a high quality. they are done right.
 
A

agmason

Donation Time
65beam,

"a rebody using a car that is solid is only common sense. much better and much easier. that doesn't require a lot of common sense to understand. nobody seems to complain when a car goes thru an auction and sells for seven figures and they say it was rebodied at such and such time. "

Reread your statement and parse every word carefully. If you would bother to think of what you wrote you will understand what TAC is all about. You can rebody any car you want and recreate any car you desire, as long as you notify everyone or any potential buyer of that fact. The problem comes about when rebodied cars are sold as "factory original" and its clearly not the case. In your world, rebody and original are one and the same. Lets say you are filthy rich, would you buy my paint by numbers "Van Gogh" painting for the same price as the orignal? After all, it looks the same.


"there also is a person capable of reproducing every part of a tiger. what is to keep someone from using his parts to build a complete body? what is it about a few tiger owners that think these cars are not to be switched around?"

Read my above statement for an explanation.


"i will not disclose anything i may know about rebodies since it really is nobody's business what owners do with their money and their cars. ???????????"

In other words, you have no proof.
 
Alpineracer8

Alpineracer8

Donation Time
Bob:

You made the statement that "i don't like driving an uncomfortable car so i don't drive a tiger..." Just out of curiosity, since an Alpine and a Tiger are dimensionally the same inside and out and share many of the same attributes, save for the drivetrain, where in your opinion is the difference in comfort level between an Alpine and a Tiger? I just find it interesting that someone with all the years worth of Sunbeam collecting, as well as the knowledge that you obviously have concerning the marque, would choose not to have a Tiger strictly based on it's perceived lack of comfort when, in fact, they are identical to an Alpine in all areas of comfort, i.e. legroom, headroom, interior space, etc. I've had multiple Alpines and Tigers over the years and have never experienced this difference in levels of comfort between the two models. Would you please explain this a little further?
 
puff4

puff4

Platinum Level Sponsor
Andy, perhaps he's referring to comfort in terms of drive-ability comfort. I have owned both a Tiger and an Alpine, and found that the Tiger was a heavier car to steer, particularly at slow speed, it had a much greater propensity to oversteer in a curve, and it didn't feel as 'nimble' as an Alpine. Admittedly, Tigers go like stink, so there's joy in that for some, but overall I, too, enjoy my Alpine more than the Tiger in terms of driving comfort.
 
Alpineracer8

Alpineracer8

Donation Time
Hey, Kevin:

Well, I guess it all boils down to a matter of perspective. Having come from a background of many years of driving early Shelby Mustangs and mid-sixties Falcons with no power steering, I find the Tiger quite nimble. Whatever drivability difference there is between an Alpine and a Tiger never really occured to me. In fact, the last Alpine I had (my Series I racer) was much heavier in the steering department than the Tiger, and the tires weren't much wider on it than they are on my Tiger. However, the steering wheel was smaller in diameter than a stock Alpine wheel and that would have made a difference.

I wonder if your explanation and/or opinion on this point is the same that Bob would give.
 
M

mikephillips

Donation Time
Main thing I find in comfort terms is that the accelerator pedal could use with being moved forward a little. In order to be at a comfortable distance from the brake and clutch my right leg needs to be cocked a bit too much, which can get tiring over a longer distance which I dont find in the Alpine.

Doesn't keep me out of the car though....
 
Alpineracer8

Alpineracer8

Donation Time
Ya' know, guys, looking back on this thread, is was Bob's comment about there being "many TAC'ed Algers" that got this discussion really going. Like Paul A., I too am skeptical of that claim, but maybe the wiser point to make would be to have Bob define what an “Alger†is to him. His question in a later post about what he would call his Alpine that had Tiger MkII quarters grafted onto it makes me think that he has a very narrow view of where the line is drawn between calling a car an Alpine, a Tiger or an Alger. So, before we get too far out here, I’d really like to read your definition, Bob, of an “Alger.â€
 
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