The Sunbeam Tiger was a "muscle car" version of the Sunbeam Alpine roadster.

Rootes American Inc. manager of West Coast Sales, Ian Garrad, realized that the Alpine's image was that of a touring car rather than a sports car, so he set out to change that image, using the recent Shelby Cobra's success as a model. He and Walter McKenzie, a sales manager, looked at several V-8 engines and determined that the new Ford Windsor 164 hp (122 kW) 260 in3 (4.3 L) would fit perfectly in the car frames.

Sunbeam asked Carroll Shelby to produce a working prototype on a budget of $10,000. The Shelby prototype was made by Shelby employee George Boskoff, and the result was judged good enough to be sold in England for production evaluation.

In order to ensure that everything would work, a second series of Alpine was ordered from Ken Miles. Ken Miles (a talented driver and car manufacturer) had just been employed by Shelby. Using new products, he added a 260 cu.in. V8 and two automatic gears on Alpine in less than a month, with a total cost of $600. Serving the company's purposes, the Ken Miles prototype was kept in the hands of Rootes Motors Inc. of Los Angeles for some time, and was eventually sold to another buyer.

Production

After doing several engineering studies, the Rootes group hired Jensen from England to carry out the work. The company then began manufacturing the Sunbeam Tiger. Production reached the mark of 7,085 cars in three separate production series (the factory was designed to produce on just two lines, Mark 1 and Mark 2, but there was a change from the Alpine IV Series and Alpine V Series panels and later cars were considered members of the Mark 1A line). Production of the Mark 2 line totaled just 536 cars, and these Tigers, with a 200 hp (150 kW) 289 in³ (4.7 L) engine, are rare today. Surprisingly, the Miles and Shelby prototypes survive to this day, along with a significant number of Tigers.

End of production

Tiger production began in 1964 and was halted by Chrysler's acquisition of Rootes in June 1967. Chrysler could not realistically consider selling a car with a Ford-produced engine, but it did not have a compatible engine to replace it. that it was from the company itself: all Chrysler V8 engines had the distributor positioned at the bottom of the engine, unlike Ford's V8 engines, which had the distributor mounted in front of the engine, making it impossible to place the Chrysler engine in the space of placement. the Sunbeam engine without major and costly overhauls. Consequently, Tiger was canceled.

The name "Tiger"

The name "Tiger" was also used on pre-Rootes Sunbeams in a completely different model in 1925. The 1925 Sunbeam Tiger was a four liter V12 race car. Initially it was called "Ladybird", but the name was subsequently changed to "Tiger". Driven by Sir Henry Segrave, it became the first car to reach 240 km/h (150 mph), and was the smallest motorized car to hold the Regional World Speed Record. A "sister" car for the Tiger was purchased and named "Tigress".

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