The November issue of Sports Car Market is out and it has a one pager on
Tigers under their Affordable Classic heading. Gary Anderson, editor of
British Car Magazine wrote it and basically it is a rehash of the
usual. However, he states that real Tigers are only worth 1/3 more than a
fake. That paragraph starts with the sentence: "Surprisingly, there isn't
a huge difference between a real Tiger and a nicely executed
fake." Funny that they would allow this to get in the magazine, Norm
wrote a nice piece on fakes in the same magazine just a year or so
ago. And Anderson does state earlier in the piece that "...your worst
danger in buying one of these cars is buying a converted Alpine...." The
article in general sends some pretty serious mixed messages and there was
no mention of the TAC program at all.
Below is my letter to the editor of the magazine:
Dear Editor:
I was happy to see Sunbeam Tigers covered as your November "Affordable
Classic". As the owner of a 1964 Tiger I can live with the assigned SCM
investment Grade of "B" for Tigers. But what I can't live with is the
statement that: "Surprisingly, there isn't a huge difference between a
real Tiger and a nicely executed fake." To be fair, the context of the
statement was dealing with costs of Tigers but it may be taken by some in
the more literal way that it was written, specifically that indeed there is
little difference between real and fake Tigers. It's unfortunate that the
addition of the words "in price" added after the word "difference" would
have changed the whole meaning of the sentence and left it in the economic
context. Although one could easily argue that price differences are in
fact huge, the main point is that the difference between a real Tiger and a
fake one is that a fake is a fake is a fake. That is true with a GTO, a
GT350, a big block Vette or any other factory specialty car. Fake Tigers
that are passed off as real (many eventually are) can have devastating
effects for the new owner and for the collector community as a
whole. Usually your magazine is much more careful in pointing out the
value in originality but you seemed to be a bit lax in this case. That
surprised me because Norm Miller, a marque expert, wrote a piece for your
magazine several issues back on the danger of fake Tigers. For many years
the Sunbeam Tiger Owner Association has organized the Tiger Authentication
Committee (TAC) which inspects, verifies and registers real Tigers. A
buyer can be sure that if the car has been TACed that it did indeed start
it's life as a real Tiger. And speaking of originality, the original ID
tags were held on by rivets, not by screws as stated in your
article.---Stephen Jones, Pullman, WA
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