Hi guys:
I think Rande had it correct. It was my understanding, and I can remember
back then, that
one of the really important reasons for Chrysler cancelling the Tiger had
to do with a bunch
of new safety regs that were introduced with the '68 model year. Of these,
the requirement
that all cars have a collapsible steering column was one of the more
significant ones. Our
Tigers don't have that, in the sense that it applies in collisions. It
would have taken some
amount of reworking of the steering column and, perhaps, the rest of the
steering gear to
meet the requirement which would have been difficult, given how well the
steering system
in our cars had been optimized by the crack engineers at Rootes (;>)). The
careful observer
will no doubt remember that a few other cars from Mother England
disappeared from the
US market at the same time (e.g. big Healeys), so I think safety regs were
pretty influential
in the decision for not only Rootes, but others as well. If the Tiger had
survived past '67,
it's pretty clear that it would have changed significantly. In a way, I'm
glad, because it is
hard to imagine Chrysler being capable of improving the image of Tigers
with anything they
might have done.
FWIW,
Tod
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