Steve,
Your post on the American 8-spoke "Silverstone" wheels brings to mind a bit of
Tiger history and nostalgia.
The Larry Reed car you refer to was the record setting drag racing Tiger
driven by Gordon Chittenden. In his book "Performance Tuning the Sunbeam
Tiger" Chittenden says on page 43 that the Silverstones were available in
widths of 5.5 and 6 inches. Yet his photo caption on page 125 says the width
was 6.5 inches. Since his book is known to contain much misinformation, I
have always regarded these numbers with tounge-in-cheek. I do remember that
the wheels were cast in both aluminum and magnesium, most often the latter,
had both type of hubs as you describe, and for the Sunbeam, had different
offsets front and rear. I had my hands on a set many year ago, but I don't
remember anything about the width except that it was very narrow--on the order
of 5 inches, but perhaps 4.5 as you say. I surely never saw any that were
anywhere near as wide as those listed by Chittenden. For this reason, IMHO
the wheels are not particularly desirable today, especially the magnesium
version. But they certainly are period-correct for a Tiger.
And a definite part of Tiger history.
Those who find all this history and nostalgia BS boring and distasteful should
SELECT YOUR DELETE KEY NOW.
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When your car was owned by Howie Schoenfeld, he mounted a set of the
Silverstones in time for that year's Tigers United. Howie felt strongly that
the wheels were definitely correct for a Tiger, probably because as a boy, he
could remember his neighbor driving a Sunbeam with the same wheels. The
neighbor, of course, was Ian Garrad, and the car was the very first "Tiger",
the Miles prototype. Ian had fitted the Silverstones after ripping out the
spokes of the original Alpine wheels. For color picture of this car with the
Silverstones installed, check Norm Miller's web page at:
http://www.best.com/~rootes1/car9.htm
I am including a reiteration of a letter which appeared on page 8 of the
September 1977 issue of the STOA newsletter, "Tiger Tracks," in an article
titled "This is an Alpine? By Ian Garrad, Father of the Tiger." The picture
referenced above appeared in black & white at the head of the article.
"This was the very first Tiger to hit the streets, i.e., the one prepared by
Ken Miles. My love for strong colors resulted in the candy apple red paint
job. Depending on the amount of sunlight, it seemed to change color several
times a day.
As you can see, we went to a lot of trouble to retain the Alpine
identification, even to a single tail pipe. Internally, the only give away
was a special Sun Tachometer, and the automatic transmission selector.
I put five thousand miles on this car in a little over two weeks, including
two days going up and down the hills in San Francisco, plus several blasts up
and down the coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The car started out with wire wheels, but we had to change to mags right away,
as the power ripped out the spokes on the stock Alpine wires.
Some of my fondest memories are the moments I wiped the smiles off the faces
of various Jag, Corvette and Healy 3000 owners--particularly as they could see
that I wasn't shifting gears because of the automatic. A great "Fun Car" and
a real traffic stopper in appearance."
Imagine being Howie back in those days!
Dick Barker
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