Tiger For Sale

What's not too love about nice garage find.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Othe...614QQitemZ180654974484QQptZUSQ5fCarsQ5fTrucks

Will be interesting to see how the auction goes, not often you find a complete car. It obviously needs a lot of recomissioning, but looks like a straight forward project.

Tigers are interesting in terms of original vs modified.. they sort of fit the de tomoaso mould.. a car that if modified to enhance safety/enjoyment there is little penalty in terms of value (sometimes a gain) where as most marques factory original has become the most sought spec.

I have been looking at this tiger with interest.. a few things that caught my attention. Its an early MKIA/SV body, as the square corner hood and doors and round corner trunk. Thats fine, what did surprise me is that the car appears to have the S3/SIV MKI style seats, as in the seperate rear backrest panel. I wonder if they were swapped in at some point, or if it was one of the running changes in production.

The BIG thing that scared me though.. they went off and cleaned the car up.. all good.. but in 1 picture there is a forklift infront of the car with the lifts under it.. then in the underbody shots you can see they have picked the front of the car up with a fork lift!! oh.. nice...

http://img688.imageshack.us/i/2323232327ffp533783enu3.jpg
http://img251.imageshack.us/i/2323232327ffp533883enu3.jpg

tiger

michael,
if you look at the photos showing the dash, you'll find the lower dash roll is pebble grain. the seats do not appear to be pebble grain.

Bob,

I can see the difference.. what surprises me is that it does seem a quite unmessed with car.. just interesting to see that both seats have i assume been replaced.. but given how early the cars body is, i was wondering how the seats got in the car.. as in if they might have been orginal to it (and bob.. you are always one of the great exponenets of there being deviation from what should be correct as per factory specs)

tiger

michael,
which item is right? like the chicken or the egg, did the dash pad come first or the seats? it's also possible that the dealer could have pulled off what byers in columbus used to do. if you liked the smooth vinyl instead of the pebble grain they would switch out the interiors. or the interior may have been damaged in shipment and needed replaced. or the dash and lower roll needed replaced after being damaged. who knows! regardless of what is in the interior, the car needs a total restoration so the little odd details don't need to picked out and questioned. those of us that were around in the 60's and 70's know that originality wasn't a big item then and we understand what was done if you needed to replace something on the car. you bought what fit and installed it. there were many aftermarket suppliers selling many items. the seat covers could be replacements done early in the cars life. i hope someone buys it and turns it into a nice tiger. maybe someone can trace the numbers and find when the car was built. that may tell something about the car. i do know that given time this could become a great looking car.

65beam said:

michael,
which item is right? like the chicken or the egg, did the dash pad come first or the seats? it's also possible that the dealer could have pulled off what byers in columbus used to do. if you liked the smooth vinyl instead of the pebble grain they would switch out the interiors. or the interior may have been damaged in shipment and needed replaced. or the dash and lower roll needed replaced after being damaged. who knows! regardless of what is in the interior, the car needs a total restoration so the little odd details don't need to picked out and questioned. those of us that were around in the 60's and 70's know that originality wasn't a big item then and we understand what was done if you needed to replace something on the car. you bought what fit and installed it. there were many aftermarket suppliers selling many items. the seat covers could be replacements done early in the cars life. i hope someone buys it and turns it into a nice tiger. maybe someone can trace the numbers and find when the car was built. that may tell something about the car. i do know that given time this could become a great looking car.

Click to expand...

Working out when it was built is easy.. working out if parts had been changed may not be.. I haven't seen many MKIA's (or SV's for that matter) with the round boot (trunk) I guess in theory we should know when the bodies went to the square corner trunk via the parts manual.. but would have been early on.. just one of the curious details..

As for our ongoing discussion (discourse?) on originality.. I dont think anyone really cares about originality when cars are new.. it becomes an issue later when the cars become collectable and the vast majority have been botched, customised and compromised.. thats when people become interested in having them as they were produced.

tigers

michael,
originality only becomes an issue when the car becomes an investment and the owner thinks originality would make his car worth more. i have watched many under go major restorations for not only rust, but also crash damage and simply age. there are many sunbeams out there with hidden modifications that just aren't noticeable. if you know the weak points of the car,correct them and the car becomes much better and much safer. with your feelings toward originality maybe you should buy every car like this that comes up for sale and add it to your australian collection and then disassemble and document it in order to increase your knowledge. then after several years you could write a book and include lots of documented photos for the next generation of buyers. i enjoy going to british shows and seeing modifications that have been done to make the car more usable in todays conditions. one of the largest parts suppliers for brit cars was geared up for years to supply parts to restore them to original condition but now understand that there is a more open attitude to make the cars more usable so they sell a wide variety of parts. now that's being open minded. i don't own a tiger but i want one. the only problem is that we're into a major sunbeam restoration at this time and have another waiting in line. my body man told me today that he would look over any tiger we might think about buying. but only if it was a driver. he says he's getting too old to do the quality of work my wife demands on our sunbeams. somebody with a passion needs to buy this car,clean it and drive it. the heck with whether it has the right seats.it looks to be all there.

Bob,

You always seem to miss that i own both types of car original and modified.. I have no problems with period mods.. also with some modern mods (ie brake upgrades etc on a tiger) what you dont seem to get is an appreciation of the cars as they were.. I have gone over this with you several times, survivor cars are rare.. its much easier to just use "what fits" or whatever you want on a car.. its much harder to keep them as they were when new.

Its not about value its about enjoying the car as it was.. if you were serious about making them better you would upgarde the pathetic brakes and driveline on your SV.. by any modern standards or standards of the last 20 years they are unreliable and inefficent. Your car would be much safer, faster and more enjoyable to drive on a handling/performance level with a set of good brakes, shocks, modern engine and gearbox and lightweight wheels and modern tyres... but then it wouldnt really be a sunbeam would it?

Given the time i'd love to be able to produce a document about the cars as they were. Document changes to them, factory options etc. The BON started it for tigers and is a great reference, some things have since be found to be incorrect and a more comprehensive book could be prodcued now.

There are people who are doing research on which engines and their origins went into tigers.. I guess the difference between these people and yourself is they are interested in the cars and their history, thats part of the enjoyment: researching, discussing and discovering.

I guess if a book comes out you'll probably not read it, doesn't seem your sort of thing.

tiger

michael,
you have no idea about what has been done to the pathetic brakes and driveline on my series 5. it is very reliable but looks very stock in appearance. you must remember that nothing goes untouched on my cars. and you're right about not taking time to read. i'm too busy working on sunbeams. keep in mind that i do 80% of the rebuilding and assembly of my cars.i don't do the body work. i was at the shop yesterday and we discussed what we were going to install on the car at the shop and what i need to install after i get the painted shell to my shop. it should be at the united in october. then we're going to start restoring another beam.

Just wanted to compliment both of you on the contributions you make to our collective knowledge and enjoyment. Different sides of the same coin is pretty much how I see it. With the concerns about clones out there, its good to to be able to spot anomalies. It is good to know what supposedly should have been the case as a part of any baseline. Then if one wants to change or improve, based on ones personal tastes, it can be done with the knowledge that it is different by choice, not through inadvertance.

For example, I bought my Mark 1A car with a mid 1000's vin number in October 1967. It came with Tiger II seats. Why, I have no idea. Dealer change, factory change, car really not new but sold as new and seats swapped because originals showed wear...? I always get people at car shows pointing out to me that the seats are wrong or they see I changed them. Then I tell them my story.

Someday I will put in my 347 stroker motor. I will be doing everything I can to make it look like an updated 260, for originality look purposes. Granted, when I turn the key, people will know there is something different! I am torn right now about upgrading the brakes to a dual master cylinder. Again original appearance versus functional improvement. At some point the improvements can get to the point that it is no longer really a Tiger. The original shortcomings are a part of its character. We all have the choice of where on that continuum we want to be, once it is our car. But when buying something from someone else, it is nice to be knowledgable about what one is getting.

My two cents. Gene

Yep.........gots to be reeeel careful

My other passion is the '69 and '70 Boss 302. There is a fellow in New Mexico attempting to sell one. But, as stunning as the car is he has spent bundles of money improving it........and now?.......he is having a heck of time selling it.

So, he spent a lot of money and now he will loose not only that money but more, as the next guy will want to put it closer to stock and that next buyer is going to buy it cheaper, due to the work upcoming.

tiger

gene,
i think the lack of funds on the rootes side plus chrysler buying in may have contributed to a lot of oddities in the cars built in 65 and 66. i asked one of our sunbeam parts suppliers a question today that i never really thought about. why did rootes change the series 4 alpine literature for the color scheme for green cars to read BRG with black pigskin upholstery? was that when they switched to the pebble grain material? was that the factory describtion for that material? there will always be a lot of unanswered questions.

Bob,

Given you said you are looking for a tiger.. why? You are the perefect person to buy an alger, you have said openly on the lists, boards etc that there is nothign wrong with swaping VINs rebodies etc.. and you have constantly said that you know of algers that are TAC'd.. you of all people should be the last person to buy a tiger given you support the idea of algers.. buy a fake and save some $.. or even better, why dot you go an d buy one of the TAC'd ones you keep talking about?

As for all that time not reading.. maybe next time that might help ID bearing failure as opposed to clutch.

tiger

michael,
calm down! every time you get hyper, your typing and spelling really gets bad. for those of you that don't know, michael and i agree to disagree on everything. i'm a 43 year owner of sunbeams. my apology to everybody on this forum for the outbursts. when he switches to e mail it gets ------

Bob,

It's not that we disagree on everything.. it's just I, like anyone else who has a different opinion to you, is apparently wrong. As you have said in your emails to me.. you like to stir things up, and as i have said to you.. just because you did things back in the day doesn't make them correct for the car. Also you rarely offer any support for things you say other than "that's how i did it back when.. or i bought this 40 years ago..". you dont seem to be able to grasp the difference between factory and period options. You dont care about the lineage of the cars and you think that whatever you do or have done means thats what's right... sorry it's just not.

People on this baord are here to enhance their knowledge of the cars, be it factory or upgrades, looking int o changes in spec and trying to document/understand them is part of our enjoyment.

i brought up something that was unusual on the car that this thread was about.. you as always have done your best to lead it down a different path.. well done you have your kicks... maybe you should get back to "working on your cars" as apparently you are not going to learn anything from anyone else.

sorry to all those who have had to read the diatribe between Bob and I.. it really shouldn't be in this thread, and its not a discussion that will benifit anyone else.

An unmolested Tiger ??

More 2 cents : With my first Tiger drive circa 1965 (ish), I have done just about all the mods and un-mods we can think of. This car would be a fun restoration for me. And by that I mean to return it to "as it came" condition. For the record, I have seen several factory substitutions of outsourced products in new cars. So, it would not be odd to find seats & trims being what the guys happened to pull off the shelf line at the time of assembly. Our original Tiger (still have it) came to us in 1965 with round boot but square doors etc. The trim was all pebble but the window waist roll was smooth. For a while, we had it in MK II trims just to keep the troops guessing. With it's current resurection, who knows what it's disguise will be? In the end, I do what the consumer pays for. Life's short, eat the ice cream first . . . . . . .randy