Listers,
Excerpted from "Tiger, The Making of a Sports Car", page 24:
"In November 1964, the Rootes' competitions department had the good fortune
to employ Des O'Dell. O'Dell had gained vast experience at Aston Martin
(where he had been chief tester for eleven years), and at Ford Advanced
Vehicles, Slough, where he had helped develop the highly successful GT40s.
O'Dell remembers with irony and affection his association with Rootes and
the Tiger:
'If someone had told me that one day I would work for Rootes, I would have
laughed in their face. Nevertheless, I came to Rootes to find these funny
things called Sunbeam Tigers. They had been to Le Mans but had used the 4.2
-litre engines when they could easily have had 4.7 units developed to the
same extent as the GT40s. But then I found out that it had been Carroll
Shelby who had suggested using the smaller engine and by so doing giving
away about 100 bhp. I just employed my GT40 experience to make the Tiger
more reliable, using 289 crankshafts and rods because they were so much
stronger and which I was able to buy direct from Ford at Slough."
Yes, this is SAD NEWS INDEED ! ! !
Bob
At 10:06 AM 3/15/99 -0700, David McDermott wrote:
> Sunbeam folks,
>
> It is with great sorrow for me to report that Des ODell has passed
>away this morning at his home in England. We had a chance this last summer
>to get to know Des and his wife Gail. For those of you who are not familiar,
>Des joined the Rootes' Competition Department and became Team Engineer/Team
>Manager during the period when the Tigers were competing on the rally scene.
>He was primarily responsible for developing and improving the Tiger in
>competition. He also handled the complex tasks of logistics. He became
>Competition Manager after winning the London to Sydney Marathon Rally with
>the Hillman Hunter. Subsequently he became Motorsport Director. When Talbot
>took over, he became Director Motorsport Europe. When Peugeot arrived he
>became Director Motorsport UK/Technical Director Peugeot International.
> Des had been invited to attend SUNI III and was very much looking
>forward to coming to America and meeting all of us.
>
> Dave McDermott
>
Robert L. Palmer
Dept. of AMES, Univ. of Calif., San Diego
rpalmer@ames.ucsd.edu
rpalmer@cts.com
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