We all remember the Sunbeam Tiger, V8 muscle in a small car, the combination that's been mentioned here a few times.
Ask a carguy about it and he will most likely say, "Oh yea, the Ford 289 in the Alpine. Sort of a Cobra wannabe" or something like that.
There were 2 Tiger prototypes built. One of them was nose heavy and ill-handling. The one that worked had the engine set back a bit and was built by Carroll Shelby.
It was further refined and got the nod to go into production for 1964. It used the 260 V8. Shelby had switched his Cobra from the original 260 to the 289 motor, so the 260's were available from Ford.
Contrary to popular belief, all Tigers had the 260 until the last year of production in 1967 when something a little odd happened.
I was a car crazed teenager at the time and after getting the brief opportunity to drive one of these "monsters" I wanted one, very badly. So off I go to the local dealer that sold Sunbeam, Reedman Motors in Langhorne, Pa. I didn't have much money, but I figured if I traded my old '56 Chevy and sold my little brother, I just might be able to swing it.
I found the perfect car. British racing green with a black leather interior. It was the new 1967 model, so it had the 289. Perfect. As I scrutinized the car, looking for all of the performance goodies that would allow me to run it up to at least 200 miles per hour in a nanosecond, I found something very unexpected. The Chrysler pentastar emblem. There it was, stuck on the side of the front fender, just below the Tiger script, it was small but it was there. WTF!!!!, I thought. Was this some promotional prank stuck on there by the dealership? (they also sold Chryslers). It was a bad joke. I hated Chrysler products.
After seeing me crouched down next to the fender, picking away at the little emblem, a salesman stopped by and explained to me that Chrysler Corporation had bought controlling interest in the Rootes Group, including Sunbeam, so now it was a Chrysler product.
This is the odd part. Chrysler had recently introduced their 5 year/50,000 mile warranty on all of their cars. The Tiger was a Chrysler. The Tiger had a Ford engine. Yep, the Chrysler warranty would cover the Ford engine. Strange indeed.
It apparently rubbed the boys at Chrysler the wrong way when they found out that one of their products was powered by Ford and, after an unsuccessful attempt at installing their own V8, they discontinued production of the Tiger.
Of the 7085 Tigers built in just over 3 years, only 536 of them were 289's.
I never got that little BRG roadster and it's not because it had a Ford motor. It's because it had that damn little pentastar and I knew what it meant.
