In 1971 I had just gotten out of the Army. The first thing I did was buy a ’70 Challenger SE 383 Magnum for my first wife. Thinking she shouldn’t be the only one with a toy, I decided to look for a Healey 3000. Every one I found was a rust bucket. One day, I saw a Mediteranean Blue Tiger at a used car lot. This stirred memories of an old college friend, Doug Pruitt, and the night I broke the trans in my ’64 GTO racing his Tiger.
The blue Tiger was all mine for $2,000. A few months later, I saw another Tiger on a used car lot and this one had a hardtop. A deal was struck and for $100 I had a hardtop. All of a sudden, the heater and radio worked. Unfortunately, when the first wife went in ’73, the Tiger had to go too. As a desperate man with child support in mind, I waved goodbye to it for $1,000.
Seven years later, I would pay the same $1,000 for a MKII that had center punched a light pole and had LAT 70s that had been painted with silver spray paint. But that’s another story.