Emmett asked for info about the event and Jay gave part of the info. 'Course, Jay slipped in just for the car show and the free beer. Jay doesn't mention that he brought his dad along and the rumor mill is that pops now owns a Tiger. American Express - never leave home without it!
The event was subtitled "Run in the Sun". Wow, was that an understatement. Friday's temperature was 104, Saturday's was 100, and Sunday a comparatively frigid 96.
As others report in, you'll get a number of different stories - only believe those that have at least three confirmations. The two mentioned postings were only to the ALPINE group so we'll keep this to ourselves, right?
Jay is correct, the Tigers were parked under the shade trees, "special interest" cars (aka Alpines) out in the sun. As I see it, the reason must have been so that the shade tree mechanics could ply their trade - the Tigers all had the hoods up and tool kits spread out in the boot. Never saw so many broken Fords in one place in my life. That must be the reason.
I didn't get to Bakersfield until about 3:30 on Friday. Earlier arrivals got in some lap time at Buttonwillow race track, so I'm told. Two choices for the evening, drag races or cruise night at the Sonic Drive-In. Some squeezed in both. Bakersfield has a quite impressive hot rod/classic car following as evidenced by the parade at the drive-in. As for the drags, I didn't go - I prefer to think that Olde Alp could run in the high 50s and didn't want to be disillusioned. From what I heard, one Tiger broke 12 seconds and another went through the traps at 112mph. I think it was Dan Walters that won a heat in an astounding 49 seconds - okay, the other car red-lighted and he broke his shifter.
Saturday morning was the car show. At one point, I counted 57 Tigers and 6 Alpines. Other Sunbeamers were "lurking" away from the action so the count is somewhat higher, although many were not registered (Jay?).
The afternoon brought the rally. I navigated for a Tiger. I don't understand time-speed-distance rallies that do not provide for odometer correction. This one didn't - our readings did not correlate to the "Official" numbers so we got bombed.
Saturday night was BBQ night (chicken), followed by a Jim Adams speech (driver of the legendary Hollywood Sports Car Tiger). He had previously raced some Alpines, "good handling cars, nicely balanced" and the Tiger was awesomely fast, but hard to turn or stop. Many stories about Doane Spencer improving on the breed. Rick Titus, son of Jerry (who won the national title for Alpine), gave a wonderously short and humorous recount of those days.
Sunday was autocross day. The sun came up much earlier and warmer than normal, the Bakersfield College stadium parking lot has about ten trees of more than twelve feet in heighth, and the course was really great. The paving is exposed aggregate instead of the usual smooth blacktop so the footing was super. You really had to work at it to spin out, but we had some hard workers. I was the second car on the grid and held fastest time of day until the fifth car ran (what the hell was a BMW doing at a Sunbeam meet?). Okay, so the first, third and fourth cars went off course and were DNF'd. My best time was 1:18.81. Dan Walters (did I mention him before?) was the fastest of the day at just under 58 seconds in a modified Tiger. The way I figure it, he had more than twice the engine displacement and horsepower than I was running, so I kicked his butt. Anybody have a problem with that logic?
At the Sunday night awards banquet (chicken), the first and second place autocross trophies for special interest/Alpines went to that dratted BMW (two drivers). The top class concours trophy properly went to Dick Timmerman's Series 2 Alpine. His car looks like it just stepped off the page of a sales brochure - hell, I was competing against him and I voted for it. I did observe a definite gender bias - the chicks voted for my car, the guys for his. I needed just a few more Susan B. Anthony suffragettes to put me on top. Ah, well, I'll take the girls, Dick can have the guys.
Don't get me wrong - I had a great time, it was fun, and it was worth the price of admission. After all, it was a TIGER meet. The two newsgroups (Tiger and Alpine) have had many mentions of how few Alpine owners support these activities and how dare we Alpiners whine about lack of respect. Look at my unofficial count of cars at the event and it proves the point. Come on guys and girls, there is respect (and safety) in numbers. No matter what they call it, when we show up at events, it is to support all Sunbeam activities. And _most_ Tiger people are great folks and do respect Alpines - it's just a vocal few that are afraid of us.
"Ole" Olson Mark I Alpine, Mark I Alpine (under construction), Series II Alpine