With the recent passing of automotive icon Carroll Shelby, it is easy to look at his amazing life through the lens of his greatest achievements—the revered Cobra and GT350 being but two that will immediately pop to mind for most casual enthusiasts. But Shelby’s career as a constructor and team owner was much more than just snakes and horses. For a brief time, in 1964, Shelby unleashed a tiger, as well.
Alpine Sickness
The story of Shelby’s involvement with the Tiger starts as early as 1956. Like so many European car manufacturers in the ’50s, Britain’s Rootes Group was looking for an economical sports car that would appeal to the seemingly bottomless American market. Since 1953, Rootes Group had been selling the fairly heavy and sedate 2.3-liter Sunbeam Alpine. Based off the Sunbeam-Talbot 90 Saloon, the Alpine looked more like a mini-Bentley than a Ferrari and had performance that set no one’s heart aflutter.
As a result, in 1956, management at Rootes gave Kenneth Howes and Jeff Crompton the directive to design a new Sunbeam Alpine sports car that would appeal specifically to the American audience. Perhaps since Howe had come to Sunbeam after working for Ford, the new Series I Alpine that he and Crompton came up with bore a striking resemblance to a miniature Ford Thunderbird! Using the floorpan from the Hillman Husky estate car (and how many of us would know what that looked like, even if it ran us over!), the new Alpine utilized the 1.5-liter, inline 4-cylinder engine from the Sunbeam Rapier combined with a coil spring, independent front suspension and semi-elliptic-sprung live axle. Girling disc brakes at the front and drum brakes at the rear rounded out the new Alpine, which tipped the scales at 2,200-pounds. With a top speed of 100-mph and a 0-60 time of 13.6 seconds, it was a performance improvement on the Talbot-derived Alpines…but only just.
The Series I Alpine went into production in 1959 and was soon replaced, in 1960, by an updated Series II Alpine. The Series II received an enlarged 1.6-liter engine in the hopes of staving off criticism of the Alpine’s anemic performance, but at 80-bhp it was still no match for the competition from Triumph and Austin-Healey. While the Alpine took a back seat to its British brethren in performance, it stood up against—and in some eyes above—the others in comfort and handling. With a spacious, nicely appointed interior that featured comfortable seats and wind-up windows, the Alpine was a pleasant and enjoyable car to drive, but as Jack Brabham stated after driving one, “Gads, what a great car if it only had power!” While it is suggested by Art Evans in his book The Shelby American Story that as early as 1962 Rootes was looking into alternative engines for the Alpine, including reported discussions with Ferrari, by 1963, no deals had come to pass.
Later in ’63, Rootes Group North American director John Pankes came to the conclusion that he would have to do something to make the Alpine more competitive in the American marketplace. Since the majority of U.S. sales were coming from California and the West Coast, it ultimately fell upon West Coast sales manager Ian Garrad to address the problem. Garrad knew that what the Alpine needed was more horsepower, but the question was how to get it in an easy and financially viable way? Production of a new, high-horsepower engine was out of the question, so they needed to find another source.
West Coast service manager Walter Makenzie began looking into what existing engines could be accommodated in the Alpine chassis. One thought was to follow Carroll Shelby’s lead by adapting a 260-cu.in. Ford V8 into the Alpine. After a little bit of measuring, Mackenzie reported back to Garrad that the Windsor V8 looked like the best option.
Garrad approached Shelby with a proposition: Would he be willing to build a prototype V8 Alpine, in eight weeks, for an amount not to exceed $10,000? One can almost see the grin that must have spread across old Shel’s face. Though his Venice, California, shop was already overflowing with racing and roadcar projects, ever the businessman, Shelby couldn’t resist the offer. According to Shelby, the day after the contract was signed a red, engineless 1963 Alpine was delivered to Shelby American in Venice, and fabricator George Boskoff was directed to engineer the conversion.
Over the coming weeks, Boskoff would alter the Alpine’s firewall to mount the Ford 260 V8 farther back in the chassis, so as to balance the weight distribution of the car better. Due to space limitations under the hood, Boskoff threw away the Alpine’s recirculating ball steering box and replaced it with a rack and pinion unit sourced from the MGA/MGB. In order to transmit the V8’s power to the rear wheels, Boskoff grabbed the same Borg-Warner T-10, 4-speed gearbox Shelby was using in the Cobra and connected it to a modified Dana 23 rear end, provided by Doane Spencer.
Two Horse Race
It may never be known if it was a case of buyer’s remorse or just a sound hedge on his investment, but several weeks into the Shelby project, Garrad got the idea that he needed another horse in the race. He approached West Coast racer Ken Miles with the question of whether he could install a V8 engine and automatic transmission into an Alpine? Miles replied that he thought it could be done over the course of a weekend! Garrad offered to help Miles do the work, and so it was agreed that Miles would take the project on for the princely sum of $600!
And so, an Alpine, a 260 V8 and an automatic transmission were delivered to Miles’ Hollywood shop on a Friday, and he and Gerrad set to work. Unlike Boskoff across town, Miles managed to shoehorn the V8 mill without having to do much surgery to the Alpine bodyshell. By midnight that Sunday, Miles—with Garrad in the passenger seat—set out for a test run down the nearby Hollywood Freeway. When Garrad was later asked how that late night test drive went, he would answer, “I was looking for a place to change my underwear!” Apparently, the performance gap had been closed.
Photo: Allen Kuhn
In the end, both the Miles and the Shelby cars would be test driven and analyzed by the California Rootes team, with the Shelby conversion being chosen to be shipped home to the UK for further analysis. Back in the UK, it was given to Rootes subcontractor Jensen who would ultimately be responsible for production of the V8-powered Alpine (though Shelby did offer to buy Alpine shells directly from Rootes and do the conversions himself, along the same lines as his Cobra program with AC) Originally slated to be called the “Thunderbolt,” it was later decided to name the new Sunbeam the “Tiger,” in honor of Sunbeam’s 1925 land speed record car. By April 1964, the first Mk. I Sunbeam Tigers were making their way back to American shores.
Enter the Tiger
Of course, before Tigers started hitting the streets in 1964, Sunbeam looked to the racetrack to help solidify the Tiger’s new performance pedigree. Due to their involvement with the prototype and their obvious racing prowess with the Cobra, Shelby American was commissioned to race the first Tiger.
In December of 1963, 10 pre-production Tigers were built, with four being earmarked for racing. Three of the examples went to Brian Lister to be built into Le Mans coupes, while the fourth car was shipped to Shelby in California. The Shelby car arrived at the Venice shop in January of 1964, where team mechanics Jim O’Leary and Ted Sutton were given the task of race-preparing the new car.
The Tiger was finished—painted in Shelby’s yellow and black Terlingua racing scheme—and ready for the SCCA Divisional race at Tuscon, on April 5. Perhaps due to his previous experience racing the Alpine, Shelby team driver Lew Spencer was designated to race the new Tiger, while Ted Sutton and a young fabricator by the name of John Morton were sent to look after the car. While the Tiger showed great speed, relative to its competition in B Production, it also demonstrated both an appetite for tires and swapping ends. According to Spencer, “It was too short in the wheelbase, had too much weight in the front, and always wanted to go backward, not forward.” After several off-course excursions, Spencer ultimately brought the car home in 12th place.
Photo: Dave Friedman
The next month at Laguna Seca, Spencer and the Tiger were entered in one of the B Production SCCA regional races in support of the USRRC weekend. Spencer lost the car going into Turn 2 on the first day and badly damaged the Tiger. The team worked late into the night to try to get the Tiger ready for the second day, only to have Spencer lose control of the unruly car again at the very same spot, not only damaging the car, but severely shaking himself up in the process. While the team was slated to move on from Laguna to Washington state for another race, the decision was made to send the car back to the shop, as a complete rebuild was needed to fix all the damage.
Spencer and the Tiger re-emerged at Willow Springs in June, for another SCCA divisional race, where it all finally came right. Spencer took a convincing B Production win, giving the Rootes Group its much longed for first victory that it could in turn use to promote the new car.
With Rootes fired up over the Tiger’s first victory, Spencer went on to run the car at West Jordan, Utah, on June 28, Cotati in July, Kent, Washington, in August and finally Santa Barbara, on September 6. While the results had gone back to a variety of DNFs stemming from handling and overheating problems, bigger problems for the program were brewing. Shelby’s operation was overloaded with both team and customer racing Cobras, the Daytona Coupe program and the 427 Cobra, as well as the manufacture of Cobra street cars. With all this work going on, it had not slipped the attention of the management at Rootes Group that many of the problems with the Tiger were due to the lack of attention and development the car was receiving at Shelby’s. By September, it was “agreed” that the Shelby-prepared Tiger would be transferred to the Columbus, Ohio-based Sports Car Forum, which had a long history of racing success with the Alpine.
Fortunate Accident
The plan was to transfer the car to the Sports Car Forum at the September running of the Badger 200 and Road America 500, at Elkhart Lake. The car would be flown to the East Coast (on a Flying Tigers cargo plane, no less!) and taken to Road America where Ken Miles would co-drive the car with Sports Car Forum driver Don Sesslar.
Interestingly, as the Tiger was being loaded onto the plane, a problem with the plane’s engine forced a long delay. Perhaps seeing one last opportunity to bill Rootes, Shelby directed mechanics O’Leary and Sutton to swap a new engine into the Tiger, while the plane was being repaired. This last-minute engine swap would inadvertently end up playing a key role in the car’s development.
Once at Road America, Miles took the Tiger out for one of the early practices, but when he came into one of the turns, he got hard on the brakes only for the car to shudder and an awful grinding sound to follow. Examination under the hood revealed that somehow, during the last-minute engine swap, not all the engine mount bolts had been attached! As a result, the engine had slid forward under the load of braking and the fan had chewed its way through the radiator.
The team was able to find a repair shop in town that could patch the radiator, but in their haste to get it all back together, they deviated from one of their usual procedures—rather than running pure ethylene glycol in the radiator, they just filled it with water. The result was nothing short of staggering in that the Tiger, which had chronically overheated from Day One, now ran cool. So cool in fact, that Miles went on to a commanding victory in the Badger 200 with it. Given the benefit of hindsight, it is now known that pure ethylene glycol is a poor carrier of heat, and so the poor Tiger was never able to transfer its engine heat properly to the radiator.
Sports Car Forum
After Road America, the Sports Car Forum (SCF) took over the Tiger with impressive results. At Indianapolis Raceway Park, on October 18, Sesslar drove the Tiger to another B Production victory. The car was then shipped to the Bahamas for the December 6 running of the Nassau Trophy, where Sesslar crunched the right front corner, and after a lengthy pit stop was relegated to a lowly 29th place.
When the Tiger made it back to Ohio, the team took a good long look at the car’s front end. Between Sesslar’s crash and Spencer’s many earlier incidents, the unit body construction that supports the right front corner was so badly wrinkled that it was deemed unwise to try and straighten it yet again. With official approval by Rootes, the car was completely stripped down to the bare tub and rebuilt using a new tub, while the old tub was destroyed.
With the rebuilt car now repainted in SCF’s white with blue stripes livery, Sesslar drove the Tiger to victory in the VIR National Cup on April 11, 1965, beating the previous year’s national B Production-winning Corvettes. In May, the car suffered an engine fire at Cumberland, only to be followed by a 2nd place B Production finish at Meadowdale on May 30. June was a tough month for the team, with two DNFs at Mid-Ohio and Road America, but they bounced back at the July 11 Mid-Ohio National Championship counter by claiming the B Production trophy. In August, Sesslar took 3rd place at a race at Lyndale Farms, in Wisconsin, but then suffered a frustrating run of DNFs at Bridgehampton, Mid-Ohio (at the USRRC) and Daytona for the ARRC Runoffs, where he was punted off course on the opening lap.
At the end of 1965, one of SCF’s owners, H.J. Meyer, left the company, resulting in the remaining members soon selling the concern. During this process, the Tiger too was sold and, oddly, converted back into a road car! However, by the late ’60s, the Tiger was race-prepped again and began competing in autocrosses and local SCCA events. By 1982, the battle weary Tiger was put away in storage where it slumbered until 2002, when current owner Buck Trippel purchased it. Ultimately, Trippel chose to restore the Tiger back to its 1965 Sports Car Forum specification, ostensibly because that year the team was able to homologate a modified Dana rear end that featured disc brakes!
Photo: John McCollister
Harnessing the Beast
My opportunity to test drive this most historic Tiger came this past April, at a rather unusual venue, the historic Pomona Fairgrounds. Much to my, and many people’s, amazement the Pomona Fairgrounds in Southern California had agreed to allow a “Shelby Reunion” track event to take place on essentially the same historic course that was run in the ’50s. Utilizing the vast parking lot of the fairgrounds—as well as a section that runs under the iconic bridge, where so many famous photographs from the period were taken—the opportunity to run on this very famous course is a rare treat…and reasonably frightening, but more on that in a moment.
Searching through the paddock filled with Cobras and GT350s, I find a clutch of Tigers, nestled together between a compound of trailers. Car owner Buck Trippel had brought the Tiger out for renowned driver John Morton to race—yes, the same John Morton who as a young Shelby fabricator in 1964, worked on the very same Tiger. Morton has raced the car for Trippel for over 10 years, affording Trippel the opportunity to refine the Tiger into the racecar that it was never really allowed to become. After a few minutes to catch up with Trippel and Morton, it’s time to pull on the Nomex, for what will surely be a sweaty session of driving, as unseasonably hot weather has pushed this inland venue up into the 90s! Not the best of circumstances to test a car noted for overheating.
Opening the hollowed-out door of the all-white Tiger, I climb over the side-brace bar of the roll cage and while slipping my right leg under the padded and taped steering wheel, slide my backside down into the low-backed, aluminum Sprint Car-style seat. Having once owned a Sunbeam Alpine for several years, there’s a certain familiarity to the cockpit, with the wood-faced dash and arrangement of gauges, but only just. This Shelby Tiger is no trailer queen. This is very much an active racecar that sees a lot of hard track time each year. The interior has more of a sense of purpose to it than a lot of restored historic racecars that see some track time, but are more cosseted. This Tiger gets worked, and there’s a certain comfort that that communicates, not unlike putting on a well broken-in catcher’s mitt.
Though I can feel the first beads of sweat starting to form at the edges of my balaclava, Trippel runs me through the starting procedure—turn the key, pumps on, don’t give it too much gas and crank the starter. I follow his instructions and the starter motor grinds away but the Tiger refuses to wake from its slumber. Trippel, Morton and several of the other Tiger owners gather around the cockpit to offer advice on how to light a fire under the Tiger. “It’s hard to start when it’s hot, you might want to give it more gas.” More cranking, but no starting. “It may be flooded now. Just put your foot to the floor…but let off as soon as it starts to fire!” Not wanting to grenade Trippel’s engine at start up, I hesitantly put my foot to the floor and start grinding away on the starter motor. Grr-grr-grr-grr-grr-grr-cough-BOOM! Finally, the Tiger bellows to life with what can only be described as a glorious noise. While I know I have said this before, there are few sounds more visceral, more adrenal gland inducing, than the sound of an un-muffled, race-prepped small block V8. It’s almost primal the way that blasting growl makes you want to blip the throttle, for no other reason than it makes you feel so good!
After pushing in the heavy, multi-plate clutch and selecting first gear from the T-10 transmission, I grab several very heavy armloads of steering wheel and gently ease the Tiger out of the paddock. Pulling out of the paddock and onto the access road to the track, I get a second or two of that Wah-Wah-Wah surging that a high horsepower car like this will do as it makes up its mind if it likes partial throttle or not, but it soon settles down into a steady pace as the revs come up a bit in first gear.
Once out on the track, I have a lap or two both to familiarize myself with the Tiger and reacquaint myself with the track. Since I was lucky enough to have been able to race here the couple of years that VARA was able to host vintage races on the old track, I know the general layout, but also know how diabolical the surface can be. The track is basically laid out in a 60-plus year old parking lot that is a virtual mosaic of surface changes and patches, laid down, seemingly randomly, over the decades. This, combined with the Tiger’s notorious reputation for being tail-happy and unstable, gives me pause as I feel it hopping and bumping over tarmac patches as we take care of our photography.
With the thumbs up from our photographer that we’re all done, it’s time to put my foot down and see what this most famous of Tigers is really all about. With my adrenal glands anticipating what is about to come, I downshift to second gear at the start of the front straight and give the Tiger a boot full of throttle. Even with earplugs in, the sound is marvelously deafening as I rocket by our camera car. At a fairly reserved 5500-rpm, I snatch third and bury my foot for another satisfying surge of acceleration, before a quick grab for fourth. Not wanting to toss the Tiger away on the first turn of the first lap, I resist the urge to keep my foot down and lift a little early for the 90-degree right-hander at the end of the straight. Hoping the tales of inadequate braking are unwarranted, I firmly get on the binders, and downshift two gears, blipping the throttle between shifts, if for no other reason than it sounds so bad-ass!
As the Tiger hops over an uneven piece of pavement near the apex, I gently squeeze the throttle back on, hoping to not unsettle the back end under acceleration. Coming out of the right-hander, the track quickly transitions to a large, increasing radius left, defined by nothing more than a few orange cones and a patchwork quilt of tarmac sections. I opt for third gear and a steady throttle, until I get a sightline on the short chute at the end of the turn, where I’m able to squeeze on the gas and run the Tiger up in third gear, before the 90-degree left at the end. Blasting down the chute, I’m heading straight for the backside of the large grandstands that line the famous Pomona drag strip, which plays host to the NHRA Winternationals and World Finals each year. With the stands approaching at an almost alarming rate, I hold the throttle for one last brief moment, before getting hard on the brakes. That’s when I almost have a “moment.”
As I jump off the throttle and onto the brake—sighting the apex to the left—I manage to find a huge dip in the pavement, just at the moment that I’m unloading all the weight from the back of the car to the front. As the Tiger dives down on the suspension and begins to rebound up with the speed of a professional basketball player, I briefly envision the car swapping ends with me waiting to be collected, rear-end first, by an abandoned vending booth under the grandstand! However, much to my pleasant surprise, in the nanosecond it took for that horror movie to play out in my mind, the Tiger bottomed out, sprang up, and then settled right back down into the braking zone, with nary a sign that it wanted to show its white tail to the approaching structure. With a sweaty sigh of relief, I blip the throttle, select second and blast away from the turn, making a mental note, to go more inside next lap!
The Tiger’s and my next challenge is a somewhat rinky-dink chicane installed to limit the cars’ speed before they get out onto the drag strip proper. It’s a right-left-right arrangement, with the angles being just screwed up enough that there is no really good way through it. I brake a little late for the first section, which sets me up for a massive amount of push to overcome to get the Tiger rotated for the middle section. Somewhat belatedly, I use the Tiger’s copious horsepower to “force” the rear end to rotate, but I have to be cautious, because once you start that process, it’s not always easy to stop it! I exit the chicane, onto the drag strip, with my first inkling of the Tiger’s potential handling shortcomings, but wash away the sensation with, what else? A heaping dose of acceleration!
Hard out of the chicane in second gear, I snatch third. Hard up the rev counter in third, I grab fourth and get back on the gas as the Tiger literally flies down the end of the drag strip and into the left dog-leg that approaches the iconic Pomona Bridge. This, for me, is the best part of the circuit. Blasting down toward the bridge, I can see that a handful of eager spectators have assembled on top to witness the Tiger in action. Approaching the bridge, I get on the brakes hard and downshift several gears, working my way back down to second as I dip under the bridge and begin the left-hand turn on the other side. This is the section where all the great historic images were taken from the Herald Examiner Grands Prix of the ’50s—Ferraris, Porsches, all manner of Specials, coming out of the bridge and making the off-camber, left-hand turn around a large tree to head back to the front straight.
Coming through the bridge, I set the Tiger up for the left, and slowly feed on the gas as it crests the off-camber apex and starts to drift out to the right. Again, I’m struck by the fact that, despite the drubbing that the Tiger’s handling took in period, Trippel has really managed to tame the beast. The Tiger floats over this difficult section, without a trace of the tail-happiness it was so known for.
Over the course of the next half dozen laps, I get more comfortable with the Tiger, and better remember which parts of the track to avoid! While I’m able to take nearly every turn faster, accelerating earlier and carrying more speed, I never seem to find a way through the chicane that the Tiger likes. Its strange combination of tightness and angles seem to be the one place where the Tiger just can’t find its footing.
Pulling back into the paddock, I shut the Tiger down with one last satisfying blast from the throttle, and am left with ringing ears for the experience. Trippel and Morton ask me what I think of the old girl and I remark how surprised I am at how well behaved the handling was. Considering its reputation, I ask Trippel what they’ve done to tame the Tiger? “I really think it comes down to spring rates,” Trippel responds. “They never really got enough spring under the car in period. So we think it was running out of suspension travel, which was causing so much of its evil handling problems.” As with so many side roads of automotive history, who knows where the Tiger story might have gone, had Shelby not been stretched so thin in 1964?
SPECIFICATIONS
Chassis Steel, Unit body construction
Wheelbase 86 inches
Track Front: 51 inches, Rear: 48.5 inches
Suspension Front: independent, wishbones, coil springs and anti-roll bar, Rear: Live axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs and anti-roll bar
Steering Rack and pinion
Weight 2,280-lbs
Engine Ford V8
Displacement 260-cubic inches
Carburetion Holley 715
Compression 12.75:1
Horsepower 400-plus
Transmission 4-speed, Borg-Warner T-10
Rear end Dana 23
Brakes4-wheel disc
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Buck Trippel and John Morton for all their insight and assistance with this article. Additionally, the author extends a sincere thank you to Oz Marlen and Marlen Motorsports for the generous track time they afforded us during the 2012 Shelby-Ford Reunion at Pomona. (Sorry we made so much noise!)
