[Tigers] D. Barkers comments on TAC

[Smit, Theo]

Part of the problem is that there are few elements, taken one by one,
that are prohibitively expensive to fake, when you've already got a body
stripped to bare metal. The reason that a lot of fakes get identified is
because few Alger "artists" duplicate everything done at Jensen, exactly
in the way done by the Jensen fabricators. It's also hard to remove
things that are present on an Alpine shell and not on a Tiger shell,
without leaving a mark. Given all that, though, it's still not in
everyone's interest to have a spotter's guide to the Tiger chassis that
covers all the details. Parking an Alpine and Tiger (from similar
production dates) side by side will show the most obvious differences at
a glance: The front inner fender reinforcements, the spare tire mounting
in the trunk, and the exhaust hangers and passthroughs are easily
differentiated between the two, yet a lot of Algers don't even do these
right.

Educating the Tiger newbies is necessary to prevent them from making an
expensive misstep, but I think that a large proportion of people that
are interested in Tigers (or any classic car) would educate themselves
prior to making a purchase. There is enough information available on the
Web, courtesy of this mailing list, Tigers United, and the club
websites, that an interested individual should be aware of the existence
of Algers and some of the steps required to establish the authenticity
of a Tiger. The most important one would be "Call someone who can help".


I think the most obvious trap that a prospective Tiger owner can fall
into is to think that the car they're looking at is such a hot deal that
they shouldn't tell anyone about it because they'll end up losing out on
the car. Newbies may not know that there's a potential problem or even
be aware that a Tiger community exists. If that is the case, how do we
educate them about that? Regardless of whether there's a surefire method
for a buyer to tell what's an Alpine or Tiger, that buyer has to be
aware that that method exists, and that is the more difficult piece of
knowledge to spread. As an example, I'd be happy to help anyone in the
Calgary area check out a Sunbeam that's for sale, and if I thought it
was questionable then I know who to go to for more information and a
judgment call based on some pictures or other information. That would
likely be good enough - it's not really necessary for me, or the buyer,
to know exactly what's being looked for, as long as I can get the right
information to the right people. But the buyer would have to know to
contact me to begin with.

Theo