First and only Tiger

[ranney-dohogne]

I bought my first and only Tiger 39 years ago and I still have it. I paid $3200 for it which was the dealer (at least that’s what he told me) cost at the time. List price was something like $3400+. I wasn’t really into it being a special vehicle at the time and I treated it like a normal car. I drove in snow, rain, you name it. As I got married and had children, there were times that I thought that I might need to get rid of it, but I simply couldn’t part with it. I drove it to work everyday for about 25 years and was rear- ended 3 times before retiring it to being my play thing. I have had many wonderful experiences in this machine. I drove it at least 7 or 8 times from St. Louis to Colorado on ski trips with one of those trunk mounted ski racks that ruins your paint. I like to tell the story about how it started right up at 24 below at Arapahoe Basin. Then there was the one ski trip back the year they opened I-70 that we drove across the whole state of Kansas at 100+mph. Whoee, what fun.
Believe me it was in pretty rough shape when the restoration started, but at least it was my rough! For those that wonder: yes, Tigers had problems when they were new. I flew from St. Louis to Ft. Worth (the port of entry) to pick mine up and save the transportation charges. I only made it about 100 mi. before the first problem showed up: the generator had come loose and was no longer ginning. The dash varnish cracked up in the first year and the paint chalked within a couple years. Brake rubber always managed to pick the winter time to start leaking. However, I will never regret having been an owner of a Sunbeam Tiger and it will be with me for a lot longer, God willing.