At 09:14 AM 01/24/2001 -0600, you wrote:
>"....... Q car" does have relevance to Tiger and some other cars. It
>refers to a
vehicle whose innocuous appearance belies the high performance hidden
within. "
And you also wrote: "Q-ship?......Sunbeam Tiger = maybe, maybe not,
depending on how much it looks like a stock Alpine."
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Larry,
You are absolutely right. Right from the very beginning, the first Alpine
V8 prototype (the one built by Ken Miles) was called a "Q-ship" by
author/drag racer Gordon Chittenden in his book "Performance Tuning,
Sunbeam Tiger." Here are the first 2 paragraphs of that innocuous little
book, which was the first Tiger book ever published:
"In the summer 1963, a few owners of what they had thought
were rather powerful sedans were shocked when a bright
red
Sunbeam Alpine appeared in their rear view mirrors,
swung to
the outside and, with a throaty exhaust foreign to the
small
four-cylinder engine supposedly under the hood,
blasted by,
leaving them both astonished and puzzled."
"As word of the "Q-ship" Alpine started to spread even
as far
south as San Diego from Los Angeles, a rumor was also
starting
to spread, "The Alpine was to get a V-8 engine."
Now that description matches your scenario about "Joe" almost perfectly, so
that ought to give you some Satis-Traction!
Back in 1963, that Q-ship V-8 rumor really did excite us down here in San
Diego. At the time, I was driving a nice little Series I Alpine (Moonstone
w/red interior, hardtop, wire wheels, and OD), and began to fantasize about
what it would be like to have a V-8 under the hood. Vaaroom,
vaaroom! Schreeech! So when the Tiger finally did become a reality, I
drove my Alpine down to my friendly Sunbeam dealer and,well.....the rest is
history. Actually, for a time there I had both an Alpine and a Tiger.
One of the local dealers that enthusiastically supported Rootes' efforts in
those days was Hungerford Motors in Escondido, so Ian Garrard used them
frequently for publicity stunts and other special events. For example, Jo
Collins was presented the pink Playboy car by Hungerford, and ultimately,
both the Miles and Shelby prototypes were quietly released through
them. Ironically, the Shelby car eventually came back to Hungerford, and
that's when Bill Carroll, who lives nearby in San Marcos, acquired it. Of
course Bill knew what the car was, but by that time Hungerford did not, so
he bought it for a song. He gets such delight out of telling the tale of
how "stole" that car, that it became his motivation for writing the 2nd
book on the Tiger, "Tiger---An Exceptional Motorcar." Bill still owns the
Shelby car, although I haven't seen it, or him, since Tigers XXII in
Eureka. And as far as I know, the beatuifully restorted Miles car---the
Q-ship---has not changed hands since the untimely loss of Bo Cheadle.
Dick
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