Since the Harrington Tiger has the greater pedigree (in terms of past
success at Pebble Beach etc.) I think that it will command the higher price
at auction this time around. RM is a better venue for attracting serious
collector car buyers than eBay, as well, so that helps its cause. Dunno if
the bidding will reach the reserve price though.
Objectively speaking, the Harrington Tiger's status as a unique example is
not much different from the various other Tigers that have been worked over
by the well-known specialty builders of the '60s. Is there any special
status conferred onto the Holman-Moody Tiger? The Boss-engined Tiger? Doane
Spencer's personal Tiger? The Tigers that saw '60s racing success have
mostly been preserved and restored, and they're all unique. The Miles
prototype should be at least in that ballpark, especially considering it's
one of the two cars that convinced Rootes to build the Tiger in the first
place. (and yes, I know that the Shelby prototype is the one that went to
England, but going for a ride in the Miles car probably gave Ian Garrad a
lot of confidence that pushing the Shelby one to completion was going to
work out in the end).
The Shelby prototype is currently more unique than the others, in my view...
Being unrestored, it's still exactly the way George Boskoff built it, warts
and all, and that's worth something. It's cool to see the perfectly polished
and rebuilt cars, but I can't help feeling that something of the history is
lost when they are taken down to bare metal, all the accumulated dings and
everything removed and smoothed out. "Better than new" is admirable, but
it's not the same as "original", and you can rebuild a car to be "better
than new" a hundred times, but it can only be original once.
Theo
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