Rootes '64 LeMans effort and Shelby

Ok.. moving this debate:

Duke Mk1a said:

Cheat is being nice. Gamesmanship would involve actually driving the Cobras faster than the Tigers. He knew there was a chance that the Tigers would beat his Cobras and then cheated to make sure they would not. His true nature was exposed.

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Duke Mk1a said:

All engines suffered from low oil press due to sloppy clearances that were by design. Two failed and a third engine was stripped down to find the sloppy machining evidence. Shelby refunded Roots the money for all of his "race" prepped engines.

All of the Shelby Cobras did not suffer from any low oil pressure issues. Funny how that worked out…

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Ok.. new thread....

Duke,

Shelby was never worried about the Tigers beating the cobras at LM. For starters... the LM race in '64 saw the Daytona coupes running in the GT class long with the British AC coupe and the regular cobras. The Tiger was with the prototypes.. so not even in the same class.

Then you have the issue of the Tiger was never going to be a threat even with a bigger and more reliable engine.. to heavy and underdeveloped. The #9 LM Tiger that races in the UK is now highly developed and a much faster and better handling car than it ever was.. it can beat some normal cobras now and then but the Daytonas are far to fast for it even now.

I doubt shelby delibertaly stuffed the engines to screw over the Tigers...i would guess they were very careful with the prep on their own engines.. which were the stronger 289 anyway...as for his Tiger motors.. slack.. sure.. negligent.. sure... but the guy was not stupid.. it ruins his rep to supply rubbish engines.

floor is open...................





and

Good call on a new thread

Oh, I fully believe that the engines were built to fail. He was not allowed to build the Tigers and knew that the next year the Tiger would be produced in numbers that could threaten his small block Cobra sales.

Having all of the Tigers fail at LeMans the year before would ensure that a Tiger would not be seen as a Cobra competitor by the sports car public. The 289 Cobra was over $5000, a Tiger ran $3499. The thousands of Tigers soon to be available would have crushed his sales of the 455 289 Cobras.

He was a very savvy businessman......and a cheat.

According to Carroll Shelby, he told Rootes repeatedly that they had to compete the Coupes in order to really test them.

Rootes took a different approach. They chose to test privately. After the Mule tested at LeMans in April, 1964 Rootes knew that there was a problem with oil pressure coming out of the corners, not to mention in the corners. This was clearly reflected in the written driver's reports of the test.

Rather than have Ian make a call to Aviaid to buy some baffled racing oil pans with spring loaded trap doors or brazing up some of their own, the Competition Department never managed to fix the problem in the 3 months remaining before the June race. It just didn't happen.

If there were "sloppy" clearances, there was 3 months to find them. Note I use "if". But nothing got fixed.

Claud Dubois told me he and the other drivers during the LeMans race would exit the corners and then simply wait until the oil pressure built up before applying the throttle. That would have cost seconds at every turn! (note that the oil pressure returned on the straights, indicating to me that the basic engine oil pressure was OK. If the bearing clearances were "sloppy" the pressure would not improve by straightening the steering.)

Shelby was a wily fox. He was not dumb. How worried could Shelby have been with the Rootes competitor that outweighted his Daytona Coupes by 300 pounds, had 10% less cubes, smaller tires, much smaller brakes and were at least 40 mph slower on the straights? (The Cobra Daytona Couples were clocked between 186 and 193 while the Tiger LeMans Coupes hit 156. BTW, this 156 is the about the same speed Doane's HSC Tiger roadster was clocked the following year) Can anyone seriously believe Shelby would risk sabotage to a vehicle his cars would "lap" every 10 laps? Shelby was no saint. I could believe he'd consider "messing" with Ferrari but Rootes? Why?

I asked Lew Spencer about the engine sabotage story and at first he got amused. Then he got serious and said that he was sure it never happened. He said the guys in the engine shop who put their names on each motor had too much pride in their work to have done something like that. Lew felt sure that sabotage never happened. Besides, Lew's Tiger program was occurring at the same time as the Rootes LeMans effort. Shelby was making very good money from Rootes campaigning the Shelby American Tiger. I've examined Shelby American ledger pages and it looks to me like Shelby managed to pocket half of his billing to Rootes. I think Shelby was too sharp to "bite the hand" that was feeding him.

As far as Shelby returning the money, most know the version Dick Barker attributed to Ian Garrad. Apparently Lord Rootes, based on information supplied by his Competition Department, believed the engines were defective and coerced Shelby into refunding the amount Shelby billed Rootes for the engines, perhaps $10K. The story is that Lord Rootes played hardball with Carroll. Lord Rootes told Shelby that if the money he billed for the LeMans race engines was not returned that Lord Rootes would call suppliers like Smiths, Lucas and Girling to offer them a choice. The choice would be that the suppliers could choose to either sell to AC/Shelby or to Rootes but not both. Shelby returned the money.

As far as "sloppy" clearances, there were also reports that the bearings had been replaced by Rootes mechanics prior to the race. Regardless, to this day, I'm always curious how bearing clearances are determined. Did the measurement come from using a bore gauge or plasti-gauge? The latter is less accurate while the former requires much more skill. Perhaps the mechanics had their own technique? We'll never know. But we do know Claude remembers the pressure coming back after the corner. That's key. And we also know that the same oil pressure problem was around 3 months before the race. (BTW, I study every Coupe picture I see hoping to get a glimpse of the oil pan that they used. Anyone know of an existing photo?)

One explanation I heard offered is that there was a separation between the mechanics and the drivers. The theory is that the driver's report fell into a crack. Mechanics were never told about the cornering oil pressure problems that were documented in April. They never worked it and the engineers had an explanation based on foaming oil. We'll never know.

As we just heard from Rosemary at SUNI, some execs at Rootes in the Competition Department were more interested in dining and publicity than the details of racing and the racing suffered as the result.

Marcus Chambers inherited the Tiger LeMans Coupe program when he became head of the Competition Department and found it to be such a mess he wanted to cancel it. That didn't happen.

I believe in this case there was a problem that Rootes should have fixed but didn't and instead blamed someone else.

bt
at the beach

Nice post Buck!

Great info there. But too much is left to "we will never know". The oil pressure returning on the straights is interesting. Why would Shelby provide different oil pans on his Cobras than the Tiger engines?????? The 289 Cobras sure had no issue with oil starvation on the corners??????

Back to 65 street Cobra sales.

Duke Mk1a said:

Good call on a new thread
knew that the next year the Tiger would be produced in numbers that could threaten his small block Cobra sales.

Having all of the Tigers fail at LeMans the year before would ensure that a Tiger would not be seen as a Cobra competitor by the sports car public. The 289 Cobra was over $5000, a Tiger ran $3499. The thousands of Tigers soon to be available would have crushed his sales of the 455 289 Cobras.

He was a very savvy businessman......and a cheat.

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Duke... In no way would a Tiger threaten the Cobra sales.. different market, different clients and different car.

Bespoke expensive sports car vs Sedate drop top tourer. While Garrad had assiprations for hot rodding the tiger Rootes did not. Never in the same market for price and performace. Heck.. Rootes didnt even aspire to battle e-types (XKE) they went after the big healy.

If anyone was in some way threatened it was ford with the stang.. and even they were not worried...'and needn't have been.

We all love our Tigers.. but love them for what they are... what we make them now.. not for re-written history... the facts and basic logic just dont show the Tiger as a threat.

michael-king said:

Duke... In no way would a Tiger threaten the Cobra sales.. different market, different clients and different car.

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Unless the LeMans Tigers presented well or even gave the Cobras a run ......

Due to the dismal LeMans performance, Tigers were then reduced to a much lesser of a sport car.

YEA, they were very luxurious and domesticated compared to the Cobra. But could you imagine if the were perceived at the time to run with a Cobra? Cobra's sales would be hinder to say the least.

Do not forget all of the well advertised LAT options. Options that Cobra's did not have.

Regardless of whatever the real story might be...a great discussion. I really enjoy reading about the history of the Tiger and it's development, production, and racing exploits.

Guys.....none of the GT40's and all but one Cobra's finished the race at Lemans
in 1964. You can talk oil pans and oil pressure but all of the engines were prepped by Shelby for the race and all of these engines suffered head gasket failures due to a batch of poorly heat treated head bolts.....from FORD

Duke one of the Coupes that did not race in the 64 lemans had an all alloy 390 big block in it. It somehow fell off the carrier on the way to run against the GT40's and Ferrari's allot of stuff was happening that year....

Moondoggie

at the beach said:

Shelby was a wily fox. He was not dumb.
I've examined Shelby American ledger pages and it looks to me like Shelby managed to pocket half of his billing to Rootes. I think Shelby was too sharp to "bite the hand" that was feeding him.


bt
at the beach

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Good one Buck !! In the Badger's book " Daytona Cobra Coupes" he make s mention that when Lee Iocooa ( sp ???) sent auditors from Ford to go over
the Shelby books he always sent two high level auditors because he knew if he sent one Shelby would screw the guy over......

Moondoggie

Duke, the oil pan you got from Shelby was the oil pan you ordered. I'm not too sure how well the Rootes guys did their ordering. After all Rootes could have ordered 289s for all the Tigers, not just for the MkIIs.

The street Cobras came with stock looking pans. For racing the Shelby race shop cut holes on each side and extended the pans with a rounded outer edge. The standard Cobra race pan would simply not fit in a Tiger. (The front corners would extend several inches into the cross member.) Something else had to be done. I have not seen any billing paperwork from Shelby for any Tiger oil pans. I don't know what the Shelby Tiger used for an oil pan - I should ask.

The whole LeMans effort was over about the time (June, 1964) that the first Tigers were starting to roll off the Jensen modification line. In the USA, the Shelby Tiger had just won its first race but that was on its 4th? outing including several major crashes.

I have not seen any documentation nor have I been able to spot a picture of the pans that Rootes used. I vaguely remember a picture taken in the Competition Department with a Tiger over a pit and a stock looking pan was in the picture with piston rods sticking out of it. I can't remember if that picture was a Coupe or a rally car. Any help?

bt

Duke,

About the LAT options.

Most of the early LAT options were actually rebadged Cobra options. (Buddy Bar charged Shelby $50 for tooling to change the valve cover name from Cobra to Tiger.)

One of the Cobra street options was the dual carb manifold that I believe the Coupes used. (I have no idea why they didn't use the Holley LeMans float carb that was developed for road racing. Again I wonder about their ordering smarts.)

We have found a letter from Lord Rootes to Shelby finalizing the purchase of these early LAT options. This letter was dated before the first Tigers were leaving Jensen.

Then in 1965 Doane Spencer took over homologating new Tiger parts. Those parts were truly unique to the Tiger.

bt

Duke Mk1a said:

Unless the LeMans Tigers presented well or even gave the Cobras a run ......

Due to the dismal LeMans performance, Tigers were then reduced to a much lesser of a sport car.

YEA, they were very luxurious and domesticated compared to the Cobra. But could you imagine if the were perceived at the time to run with a Cobra? Cobra's sales would be hinder to say the least.

Do not forget all of the well advertised LAT options. Options that Cobra's did not have.

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Duke the target market for the tiger was set well before LeMans... Look at the factory comparison data they were benchmarking the Healey and TR. Also they examined irs and 4 wheel discs with 14 inch wheels early on... They concluded the mods would bring it into line price wise with an xke and it wasn't as fast and the looks and name would not cut it at that price. Really you are reinventing the tiger history ... Shelby didn't hold the car back from being a great race or performance car... Rootes did..
1 because they just wanted a higher level of reliable performance for the alpine to sell in the states.
2 they had limited funding so wanted to use as much of the existing parts without change as possible.

Garrard wanted a hot rod he instigated the LAT parts to help ppl races tigers stateside to boost sales.. As was done with the alpine.. The sunbeams were more actively raced and supported by Rootes USA than they ever were by the factory in Europe.

Rootes entered the alpines and tigers in LeMans and rallies in the continent to show endurance... Not outright speed.

Let's please be honest with ourselves... If Rootes thought they could sell heaps more tigers at greater profit as hotrods they would have... They knew they didn't have the branding or the funds. They built a great car we all love.. Flaws and all... If you and bill want cobras.. Buy them... But don't pretend your tiger was held back to prevent it from being a period rival...

They punched above their weight with scfvand hsc.. Even the Fraser tiger... But they were the exception not the rule.. And I bet they cost more to make that fast than the cobras and Stang's they raced

Oh my

Since you say I will say anything, was it real?

If you leave a recording device or stand by your car looking at the one next door at a show you'll hear the same comments along with the "what's a Tiger". I wouldn't give much weight to the man on the streets average knowledge on politics or cars. For years I had a 1965 lic. repop plate on my Falcon and people would ask "what year is it," when standing in front in plain view of the plate. As much as I hated the smiley faces when they came out on T shirts, I use them now only as a reminder that I am not serious.

Maybe we jinxed by writing about it but rumor has it that two LeMans Coupes "celebrated" the Tiger's 50th anniversary at this year's LeMans classic with engine failures.

Sorry guys! (I know how it feels.)

bt
at the beach

at the beach said:

Maybe we jinxed by writing about it but rumor has it that two LeMans Coupes "celebrated" the Tiger's 50th anniversary at this year's LeMans classic with engine failures.

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Damn...did the Shelby shop produce the engines?

Duke Mk1a said:

Damn...did the Shelby shop produce the engines?

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No.. superperformance and kirkham sabotaged them.. they are worried that the tiger sales might damage theirs

michael-king said:

No.. superperformance and kirkham sabotaged them.. they are worried that the tiger sales might damage theirs

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Michael, will miss our "on the same side of the world" and everyone else in the states is asleep conversations.

The irony is im actually 2-3 hours further back in time than normal... you still going to be around in september? I might be in your neck of the woods. As a side note.. have met 4 Sunbeam people here... go figure!

michael-king said:

The irony is im actually 2-3 hours further back in time than normal... you still going to be around in september? I might be in your neck of the woods. As a side note.. have met 4 Sunbeam people here... go figure!

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Leave Korea on 5 August, 25 days...but who is counting.