That seems to be the sticking point. You can take the stance that 'success'
means total domination over the other competitors, and I'll be the first to
admit that the Tiger didn't achieve that if you consider the season as a
whole. If you look at individual races you'd have to think that the Mustang
and other camps weren't tremendously happy to see Doane and Jim Adams show
up time and again with their Tiger. Has anyone ever talked to Jerry Titus
and others that raced in 1965 about what they thought of having to race
against the Tigers? Might give some clue as to the respect they'd won from
their competitors - that would be one measure of success, even if it's not
something you can take to the bank or put on your fireplace mantle.
My main argument has been to consider the level of effort expended by the
racers campaigning the Tiger, and the efforts by Rootes in backing them (or
not), and if you want to, to compare that to the backing Rootes extended to
competition campaigns for their other cars. A critical thing is that from
'64 onwards, Rootes was not in great shape financially, and they may not
have been able to spend much even if they'd wanted to. Certainly Ian Garrad
stuck up for the efforts of the racers in the US, but there's only so much
he could do.
Consider too that it's much harder to test and explore the limits of a Tiger
than it is of the Imp or Alpine - the budgets and time available to the
Tiger teams at the time probably didn't allow them to do nearly enough
development. I know that I'd approach any car capable of pretty much lifting
the front tires going down a straightaway with a great deal of caution...
Best regards,
Theo
_____
From: Drmoonstone@aol.com [mailto:Drmoonstone@aol.com]
Sent: January 31, 2005 2:55 PM
To: jxnichols@sbcglobal.net; Drmoonstone@aol.com; theo.smit@dynastream.com;
itswonderful@comcast.net; tigers@Autox.Team.Net
Subject: Re: Fantasy Island!!!Some
Neither do I and I did not call the Tiger a failure. My comments were about
not having a commonly agreed upon standard of success. Still don't know what
we are talking about when we use the word success.
Moonstone
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