Andy,
Thanks for the information. (I'd thought your number was pretty close to the
changeover - that's why I asked the question in the first place.)
I've also heard similar comments about Bill Carroll's book. I've never spent
the time to figure out if they are true. But I have studied a small part of
Bill's book and did my own version of "fact checking" on it.
About 8 years ago I noted many inconsistencies (maybe a total of ten items)
between the description of the construction of the Tiger prototype in Mike
Taylor's book versus Carroll's. I then went out and chatted with people who
were working at Shelby American back then and had first hand knowledge. I
first spoke with John Morton who hooked me up with George Boskoff. Then Phil
Remington and Ted Sutton. Finally I visited with Lew Spencer and Jim
O'Leary. Along the way I tossed a couple questions at Carroll Shelby
himself.
Bottom Line: In every case, each and every one of them recalled the events
as Bill Carroll had recorded them. Never once (where there was a discrepancy
between the accounts) was Mike Taylor's version supported by the guys who
were actually there. Unfortunately, the mistakes in Mike's book continue to
be believed and spread. Recently a new book on Rootes racing repeated Mike's
account. Again, I'm only talking about the events surrounding the
construction of the Shelby prototype.
To be fair to Mike, I did find one person who supported Mike's version
versus Bill's on how the Shelby prototype was shipped to and then returned
from England. Both books relate how the wife of a Rootes executive drove it
across the USA. One account has her driving it east, the other book has her
driving in west. HJ Meyers, Sports Car Forum president at the time,
personally knew the lady, because she was the wife of his local Rootes
district manager. HJ sided with Mike on that one.
Finally, as many mistakes as Mike has in his book, they're nothing when
compared to the mistakes poor Dave Friedman made when he wrote the chapter
on Tiger racing in his Shelby American Racing book. He somehow managed to
miss 2/3 of the Shelby Tiger races. He somberly captioned a photo saying
something like "Lew Spencer never raced the Tiger again after this crash".
I've found that Lew raced it once or twice per month for the next 5 months.
(And I'm sure that real Tiger researchers like Norm Miller or Bill Martin
could easily improve on what I've found.)
Buck Trippel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andy Walker" <awtiger@cox.net>
To: "Buck Trippel" <BuckTrippel@Verizon.net>; <tigers@autox.team.net>;
"Thomas Witt" <atwittsend@verizon.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Tigers] Any thoughts on e bay Tiger # 260374562784
> Hey, Buck:
>
> It had a toploader in it. According to Bill Carroll's book, it would have
> been the second car off the line with the Toploader. However, that book
> is supposedly loaded with incorrect info so I can't substantiate that.
>
> Andy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Buck Trippel" <BuckTrippel@Verizon.net>
> To: <awtiger@cox.net>; <tigers@autox.team.net>; "Thomas Witt"
> <atwittsend@verizon.net>
> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 1:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [Tigers] Any thoughts on e bay Tiger # 260374562784
>
>
>> Did your first Tiger come with a T-10 instead of the Toploader?
>>
>> bt
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: <awtiger@cox.net>
>> To: <tigers@autox.team.net>; "Thomas Witt" <atwittsend@verizon.net>
>> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 11:04 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Tigers] Any thoughts on e bay Tiger # 260374562784
>>
>>
>>> Whereas I can't speak to Tom's comment about the first 400 Tigers having
>>> black dashes, I can confirm that my first Tiger, B9470058, had the black
>>> Alpine dash. Yes, it is true that a number of the early Tigers had the
>>> Alpine dash. Maybe Norm can step in on this with a specific
>>> number...Norm?
>>>
>>> Andy Walker
>>> Edmond, OK
>>> B382001600LRXFE
>>> B9006857LRX
>>>
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