Tiger B382000604 LRXFE‏

HolyCat said:
If a person moved an engine from their Camero to their Firebird, would one call the result a Camero or a Firebird?.
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I was involved in the street rod industry for many years and most of those cars don't have the original drivetrain--in fact most Fords have Chevy engines. They are still called Fords though.
If someone is passing off a converted Alpine as a Tiger then it should be represented that way, if it's an Alpine that has a V8 with the Alpine vin # then I would call it an Alpine V8.
 
cobrakidz said:
I was involved in the street rod industry for many years and most of those cars don't have the original drivetrain--in fact most Fords have Chevy engines. They are still called Fords though.
If someone is passing off a converted Alpine as a Tiger then it should be represented that way, if it's an Alpine that has a V8 with the Alpine vin # then I would call it an Alpine V8.
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just to be a pedant..... there actually were factory Alpine V8's... the cars sold in France and Germany were titled as Alpine V8's and even have ALPINE 260 sheilds on the MKI/IA versions. This was due to other manufacturers having the Tiger name listed.

I personally think Tiger conversion, Tiger tribute, clone (if it tries to be correct) replica same deal....

The real issue is why switch the VIN and JAL unlkess you intend on passing it off as something its not.
 
I agree with you 100% on the vin tag switch--then you are trying to deceive the public. If you have an Alpine V8, Alger, etc... be proud of it and enjoy it--I know I do with my beater.
 
No, Not Really

George Simpson said:
Don't forget ALL Tigers are converted Alpines!!:eek:
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This is the point - production Tigers are NOT converted Alpines. Tigers and Alpines share most of the same body panels, but there are differences in some of the panels before the panels are welded together to make the Alpine body or the Tiger body. I don't think we would call a 1968 Firebird a converted Camero (or vice versa, for all you Pontiac fans out there), even though they do share some panels in common. It is a matter of degree, perhaps. Rootes, or Sunbeam, or Jensen did not just simply pull a body off the Alpine assembly line and ship it over for a V8 to be stuffed in it. When the body was welded together, the body was made as an Alpine. Or as a Tiger. Not for both.
 
Converted

Carroll Shelby converted cars... Alpine to Tiger,Mustang to Shelby Mustang,AC Ace to Shelby Cobra. (Very good at converting cars):rolleyes:
 
No George, Shelby built 1 prototype for Rootes.

Rootes took the proto and moved it into production. Shelby did not a have production line making Tigers. He did have a line for Cobras and GT350's

The whole TAC program is based on the fact that there are observable differences in the unibody between Alpines and Tigers. Those differences started as the sheet metal body was being put together.

An Alpine body was not completed and then "converted" into a Tiger body.

It was a Tiger from the beginning.
 
In my view, a production car "is" what it was when it was built and sold to it's first owner.

That includes changes made post-factory by the likes of Shelby, Saleen, Roush, etc.

Even if they don't have body differences, that doesn't change what it is. A 6 cylinder Mustang cannot become a Boss 302 by having all the right parts bolted onto it. Nor can a 6 cylinder Camaro become a Z/28, of for that matter a MkI Tiger become a MkII.
 
Shelby Mustangs in 65/66 arrived at Shelby's place minus a lot of parts, they were built at the San Jose Ford plant specifically to be GT350's and not regular Mustangs. So they too are like Tigers--similar but yet different from the very beginning.
 
LRXFE

if we could go back in time we would probably find that the pressed steel build sheet for a body intended to be a tiger would show certain panels and parts to be deleted. some of these delete items would be the alpine trans tunnel, inner fender braces, the two center triangles under the square box of the bulk head and the battery box. the front floors of a tiger clearly show how the alpine floor panels were torched to fit the tiger tunnel. I've seen a lot of tigers with three mountings on the top of the firewall for the pedals. two of these were for the alpine. look behind the voltage regulator mount of an early tiger and you may find the captive nut for the alpine regulator still attached from when they tried to drill the nut out. it just bent back and did not break off. tiger X frames also had the pass thru for the alpine exhaust. the trans mount bolts over the front of this pass thru. both cars carried the same pressed steel patent number tag attached to the left side of the package tray. the JAL and SAL tags were body numbers that matched the build sheets for pressed steel and were also used by rootes and jenson in order to build the tiger or alpine to the intended specs. how can you say a tiger is not a converted alpine body?
 
Because The Body Was Assembled With Different Parts

Yes, many of the body panels were common between the Alpines and Tigers. Remember that Rootes was financially hurting when the Tiger project began. So they did leave a lot of the Alpine panels alone, unless they needed to change them for the Tiger. Sometimes it is cheaper to continue using one part on two different bodies than to re-engineer the part for a second body and have to deal with sourcing and stocking two (instead of one) parts.

As stated before, a body was assembled to be a Tiger or it was assembled to be an Alpine. The same body was NOT used for both.
 
Back to the beat down

Fellas stay focused on informing and not misinforming the general public.
This is the same eBay car that was sold on by a long time owner "per auction copy." That seller said he didn't know but it had a hole for the spark plug removal so it must be real car! It has a Silver battery and a ball valve for the heater and love the use of the blue plastic wiring crap.
But those welds are nicer than the Jensen guys did that is a screaming yellow flag. I do not think you can pay modern guys to do bad stick welds, they probably don't even have a stick welder.

It is a real car it has 4 wheels a motor and brakes.

"Algers sold on to England," why belittle the English? US seems to have plenty low information suckers to keep this nice collection of parts going round n round.

Pics are from old eBay listing
 
body

set a bare metal mk 1 tiger next to a bare metal series 4 alpine and tell me the tiger is not built on an alpine body and did not come off the same pressed steel assembly line. as I said , both bodies carry the same patent numbers so they both have to be alpine bodies. there were just parts left off the body if it was intended to go to jenson. if someone wanted to rebody a tiger there is no reason to disturb the jenson welds. if you watched the recent e bay auctions for tiger specific items it was easy to figure out how to install these panels into an alpine. many already knew that. look at the front crossmember and suspension. they're the same except for the provisions for the rack mounts and the reversed steering arms. doesn't the tiger have the alpine spare tire well? turn the body over and check the tabs for brake lines, etc. the difference was which plant did the final assembly. rootes or jenson. the facts are that they are both sunbeams and share many, many common parts.
 
They are both Sunbeams. But Pressed Steel just produced bodies. They became Alpines or Tigers once the car was built.
 
Warren said:
"Algers sold on to England," why belittle the English? US seems to have plenty low information suckers to keep this nice collection of parts going round n round.
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My comment was not meant to belittle. I was told by a very good source years ago that a lot of Algers get sent to England as the TAC system and the internet has made selling them in the states more difficult.
 
Still Not Getting It?

Tiger tamer said:
They are both Sunbeams. But Pressed Steel just produced bodies. They became Alpines or Tigers once the car was built.
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No, Pressed Steel assembled each body to be a Tiger OR an Alpine. While assembling the body, they knew which it was for and used the correct steel components for each. Alpine bodies are different from Tiger bodies, regardless of how similar they look.

If it doesn't matter to you if your car started off its existence as an Alpine instead of Tiger, that is fine. Just please don't try to convince others that it is a Tiger. That is the fraud that some others have spoken about.
 
LRXFE

I have an alpine in the garage that has body panels from a tiger. what do we call that? there could never have been a tiger if it wasn't for the alpine. there are differences between the two bodies with those differences being the trans tunnel, no battery box in the tiger, different bulk head braces ,a modified front cross member in the tiger and a few other minor add on's and additional holes that jenson cut.
 
Alpine v Tiger Body

One of my pet inspection maneuvers is to stick my fingers straight down under the shifter arms into the X-frame arm. If it's boxed, odds are it is original Tiger. If it's open, then it could be extensive rust repairs or a tip off to look harder at the rest of the critter. As far as examining the welds for originality. The factory use of gas-less wire feed and the resulting slag is pretty easy to recognize. Welder hiccups?
 
Duke

Probably should have used different word . I do think they have the same internet :)
If one decides to believe what they read in a eBay listing we can't help.

We beat this car up before the used car sales person , got involved.

Lots of us guys out there , who can post the VIN number of a yellow flag car,then let the search engines work their magic .
 
Warren said:
Fellas stay focused on informing and not misinforming the general public.
This is the same eBay car that was sold on by a long time owner "per auction copy." That seller said he didn't know but it had a hole for the spark plug removal so it must be real car! It has a Silver battery and a ball valve for the heater and love the use of the blue plastic wiring crap.
But those welds are nicer than the Jensen guys did that is a screaming yellow flag. I do not think you can pay modern guys to do bad stick welds, they probably don't even have a stick welder.

It is a real car it has 4 wheels a motor and brakes.

"Algers sold on to England," why belittle the English? US seems to have plenty low information suckers to keep this nice collection of parts going round n round.

Pics are from old eBay listing
Click to expand...

Warren,

This is the car my son and I inspected. The dealer that bought it was clueless but it was apparent to him that if he sold it as a Tiger he could have big liability on his hands... Especially if the new owner contacted me for TAC... The auction ended early and I have not seen the car since...
 
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