If you went looking for the true father of the Sunbeam Tiger, you might surmise that American Carroll Shelby would be the one. And while Shelby did a great deal of the development on the car, the initial idea to put an American V8 engine into the British built Sunbeam Alpine came from celebrated Australian racecar driver and F1 campion, Jack Brabham. Frustrated by the lack of power from its small four-cylinder engine, Parent company Rootes Group had even considered working with Ferrari to develop a more powerful in-line four-cylinder engine to suit their needs. With no results spawning from that hopeful Anglo-Italian union, Brabham contacted Norman Garrad at Rootes, with the idea of dropping a Ford V8 engine into the Alpine. Garrad’s son Ian was conveniently located in California, operating as the West Coast Sales Manager for Rootes, not far from the Shelby headquarters. Shelby and his team had already made considerable inroads with the V8 conversion of the AC Ace, which would eventually become the Cobra, so it made sense that much of that learning could be applied to the Alpine.
The Lake Mirror Classic Auto Festival Oct 16th -18th 2015 1965 Sunbeam Tiger owner Chuck Hall Art Evans Collection
With both size and weight advantages, the potent Ford 260 V8 was a near perfect fit, requiring some engineering modifications to the chassis and suspension, but yielding a very potent and cost-effective sports car that could be easily converted in volume production.
