Sunbeamers:
For those of you planning to attend Tigers United this summer at Mammoth
Lakes, California (and keep in mind that no excuses for not attending
are valid): Please be sure to write out your checks excatly as spelled
out on the entry form. If you don't, event chairman Bill Graf will be
unable to deposit your check and it will have to be returned to you for
correction. Sorry about that, but them's the rules (of the event's
bank).
On a more fun note......look for this space soon (like tommorrow??) for
an important announcement of an exciting guest speaker for Mammoth (and
United). This is someone who played a very important role in the
construction of one of the original Tiger prototypes.
In non-related news..... Jane and I participated with the Tiger in a
neat annual car show in Palm Springs, California on Saturday. While
standing near the Tiger I had a very interesting conversation with a
visitor to the show. Turns out he is close to, and has the location and
phone number of Kenneth Howes, the father of our line of cars (Alpines
and Tigers). Mr. Howes is the man who designed the "modern" Alpine (and
thus the Tiger) from the ground up. He hasn't talked to him for a while,
but we will arrange to try to contact him in Europe where he now lives
(not the U.K.). We're hoping he's healthy and happy and we can talk him
into attending a future Sunbeam event (maybe the next SUNI if that ever
comes off). If not, he would of course be great to interview and ask a
lot of the questions I'm sure we all might have about how the design of
our cars came about. I'll keep you posted if we make progress.
One of my favorite Howes stories (from Chris McGovern's Alpine book,
Alpine The Classic Sunbeam, I think) is that after the car design was
basically done, the dash Rootes installed in it was not to Howes liking
so he decided he could do better, and he did.. The original dash looked
pretty much like the typical Triumph/MG setup of the time (pretty
boring, if you ask me). It took Mr. Howes just a day to come up with his
version, the beautiful dash design and layout that appeared on all
Alpines and Tigers, and was one of the main things that got me hooked on
Sunbeams way back in 1964.
Steve Sage
1967 Tiger MK1A
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