Doug,
I had written you a long reply and was almost ready to send it when my
wonderful Eudora Pro 4.0 crashed and my e-mail went into the bit bucket. So
here goes again.
Let's take an extreme case and cut out around the VIN and JAL tags of a
totally gone Tiger and graft an Alpine to it. Now this may satisfy the
letter of the law in your state, I'm not sure. But unless you are very
knowledgeable and thorough in your restoration, the TAC people will be able
to tell it's an Alger. This is because, as you probably know, Tigers were
made differently for Alpines starting from the moment they started being
fabricated at Pressed Steel Limited. Some of these differences are so
profound as to be virtually impossible to duplicate after the fact. It is
these differences that are the basis for the TAC authentication. Now there
is at least one case I know of where TAC failed to authenticate and that
car went on a year later to win the Lord Rootes Trophy. It takes three TAC
authorized people to inspect a car and two of the three have to give a
thumbs up. This car only got one thumb up, so they declined to OK it. The
owner was and is very hostile to TAC and even covers up his VIN and JAL in
public. You and others may have strong opinions about this issue and this
particular situation. For no one will this question be more pertinent than
for some future buyer of this car who may be shocked to find out after he
has paid a premium price that he can't get his car TACed. But this is an
extreme case and most of the time there is no question as to whether a
Tiger is a Tiger or an Alger. Certainly not in your case with just
replacing doors and trunk lid.
Let me make it clear that all of the above is simply my own opinion
regarding the TAC issue and not an "official" position of TAC. Also
speaking for myself, I can understand that some dyed-in-the-wool
iconoclasts will react badly to the concept of TAC regardless of the
authenticity of their car. This is a complicated issue and there are valid
points from many different perspectives. But my point in the posting you
quote is that at least we should be discussing this issue based on facts
not fiction. I hope you agree.
Best regards,
Bob
At 04:12 AM 7/13/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Isn't that really the issue here? If a rusted out tiger is rebuilt fron
>an Alpinse body shell, it's an Alger. Where is the line between a
>restored Tiger and one of those fradulent Alpine conversions?
>
>Doug Leithauser
>
> I don't think authenticity has anything to do with
>original
>rivets (another issue completely) or even how much sheet metal
>has been
>replaced.
>
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