Rob,
I agree that the Tiger should not be omitted as there is a Shelby linkage
(even if only in name). And, I applaud you for your letter. That said, to
hear George Boskoff's account Shelby himself seems to have had very little
involvement. According to George, Shelby basically told him to fit the Ford
engine into the Alpine. When there was an issue about the steering rack
Shelby told him to bend the arms. It was Boskoff who took the Rootes
representative for the test drive when finished. When he inquired about the
process (drawings etc.) of the engine swap George simply replied that he had
some templates in a box.
This pretty much supports the rumor that Shelby did the job for the money.
As far as I'm concern Shelby was the businessman and George Boskoff was the
fabricator/designer. Even there the Boskoff conversion was likely more proof
of concept with Rootes making refining changes before bringing the Tiger to
market. I think in TBON there is an ad (picture) of Shelby pitching the
Tiger. Perhaps with Norm's permission you could send that to the editor.
Tom
> Autoweek just posted a list of Shelby's 10 most important cars, and I
> wrote Dutch Mandel, one of the editors, mentioning the Tiger's omission.
> He countered that the tiger was like the Toyota 2000 GT that Shelby raced.
> I wrote back saying the two are not at all analogous. Furthermore, we
> could argue that he did more engineering in the tiger's case than lending
> his name on the modern Shelby mustangs or Omni pocket rockets.
>
> Rob
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