Paul,
Thanks for the Reference. I went to Mike Taylor's book for verification.
The quotation from Mike Taylor's book:
" John Panks, for example, had several meetings with the Rootes board
and suggestions such as the possible use of the Humber Hawk engine had
been discussed. In the event, two other units were tried. Don Tarbun (a
member of Rootes' development department) recalls, "We were given the
opportunity to install either the four cylinder 1600 cc Alfa Romeo
engine or the Daimler 2.5 liter V8 unit, with the explicit instructions
that the substitute engine had to be fitted with the minimum of body
modifications. Alas, neither unit proved satisfactory and the idea was
dropped.
In the early sixties, Jack Brabham, too, had ideas for vastly improving
the Alpine's performance. His workshops were already involved in the
production of tuning kits for the Alpine but, likes Rootes' development
department, Brabham realized that the only real way to increase the
Alpine's performance was to install a larger engine. To this end, he had
several discussions with Rootes representatives and in particular, Peter
Ware, suggesting the installation of an American V8 engine. However, as
Brabham remembers, "They were listening but seemed embarrassed at the
idea of an American engine in one of their cars". "
The proposed American Ford unit measured just 20 inches (508 mm) across
the cylinder banks whereas the Daimler engine was over 28 inches (771.2
mm) and had a rear mounted distributor. This accounted for the
difficulty Rootes' development department had in installing the Daimler
engine into the Alpine. "
Apparently hints that some thinking of other engines was circulating. I
would be surprised proposals didn't surface. Certainly 2.5 L would not
be much of a gain, and Jack Brabham's involvement is of interest. Being
"given the opportunity" and actually doing so may be miles apart. A
quick engineering drawing fit layout might have scotched the rear
distributor Daimler at that point. If one actually were made, as a
trial evaluation, it would need to be shown that the offered car was the
one from a Rootes prototype engineering evaluation, to have historical
interest. There would still be proper legal identifications. Even
Rootes was a stickler about that.
Steve Laifman
Paul R. Breuhan wrote:
> An html reference can be found here to the Mike taylor book which
> talks about the Daimler engine (go to the page bottom)
>
> http://www.team.net/www/rootes/sunbeam/alpine/mk1-5/history.html
>
> The page title is...History of the Alpine: Taken from the book TIGER
> The Making of a Sports Car by Mike Taylor, ISBN 0-85429-774-X.
>
> Of course this offers no proof that the Ebay car is nothing more than
> someone's backyard butchery.
>
> Paul
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