Tiger (pronounced tahy-ger)
(1) A
large, carnivorous, tawny-colored and black-striped feline, Panthera tigris, of
Asia, ranging in several subspecies from India and the Malay Peninsula to
Siberia.
(2) In
non-technical use, the cougar, jaguar, thylacine, or other animal resembling
the tiger (in wide use in southern Africa of leopards).
(3) A
person of some fierceness, noted for courage or a ferocious, bloodthirsty and
audacious person.
(4) In
heraldry, a representation of a large mythological cat, used on a coat of arms, often with the spelling tyger or tygre (to distinguish the mythological beast
from the natural tiger (also blazoned Bengal tiger), also used in heraldry).
(5) A
pneumatic box or pan used in refining sugar.
(6) Any
of several strong, voracious fishes, as a sand shark.
(7) Any
of numerous animals with stripes similar to a tiger's.
(8) A
servant in livery who rides with his master or mistress, especially a page or
groom (archaic).
(9) In
entomology & historic aviation, a clipping of tiger moth (in the family
Arctiidae), tiger beetle or tiger butterfly (in tribe Danaini, especially
subtribe Danaina).
(10) Any
of the three Australian species of black-and-yellow striped dragonflies of the
genus Ictinogomphus.
(11) In
US, slang, someone noted for their athleticism or endurance during sexual
intercourse.
(12) In
southern African slang, a ten-rand note.
(13) As TIGR (pronounced as for “tiger”), the abbreviation for Treasury Investment Growth Receipts: a bond denominated in dollars and linked to US treasury bonds, the yield on which is taxed in the UK as income when it is cashed or redeemed.
Pre 1000:
From the Middle English tygre & tigre, from the Old English tīgras (plural) and the Anglo-Norman tigre (plural), from the Latin tīgris, from the Ancient Greek τίγρις (tígris), from an Iranian source akin to the
Old Persian tigra- (sharp, pointed) and
related to the Avestan tighri & tigri (arrow) and tiγra (pointed),
the reference being to the big cats “springing” on to their prey but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes no
application of either word (or any derivative) to the tiger is known in Zend. It was used of “tiger-like” people since the
early sixteenth century and that could be complementary or pejorative although the
female form (tigress) seems only to have been used in zoology since the 1610s
and was never applied to women. The tiger's-eye
(yellowish-brown quartz) was first documented in 1886. The word “liger”, like the creature it
described, was a forced mating of lion and tiger. As a modifier, tiger is widely used including
the forms: American tiger, Amur tiger, Asian Tiger, Mexican tiger, Siberian
tiger, tiger barb, tiger beetle, tiger bench, tiger-lily, tiger lily, tiger's
eye, tiger shark & tiger's milk. A female tiger is a tigeress. The
alternative spellings tigre & tyger are both obsolete. Tiger & tigerishness are nouns, tigerly,
tigerish & tigerlike are adjectives and tigerishly is an adverb; the noun
plural is tigers.
Lindsay Lohan (b 1986) atop tiger in Kult Magazine (Italy), January 2012, photograph by Vijat Mohindra (b 1985), makeup by Joyce Bonelli (b 1981).
In idiomatic
use, a country said to have a “tiger economy” (rapid and sustained economic
growth), especially if disproportionate to population or other conventional
measures. “Tiger parent” (and
especially “tiger mother”) refers to a strict parenting style demanding academic
excellence and obedience from children; it’s associated especially with East
Asian societies. The “tiger cheer” dates
from 1845 and originated in Princeton University, based on the institution’s
mascot and involved the cheerleaders calling out "Tiger" at the end
of a cheer accompanied by a jump or outstretched arms. Beyond Princeton, a “tiger cheer” is any “shriek
or howl at the end of a cheer”. The
phrase "paper tiger" was apparently first used by comrade Chairman
Mao Zedong (1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1949-1976)
when discussing his thoughts about the imperialist powers. A calque of the Chinese 紙老虎／纸老虎 (zhǐlǎohǔ), it referred
to an ostensibly fierce or powerful person, country or organisation without the
ability to back up their words; imposing but ineffectual. Phrases in the same vein
include "sheep in wolf's clothing" and "a bark worse than their
bite". To be said to “have a tiger
by the tail” suggests one has found one’s self in a situation (1) that has
turned out to be much more difficult to control than one had expected and (2)
difficult to extricate one’s self from, the idea being that while holding the
tiger’s tail, things are not good but if one lets go, things will likely become
much worse.
Lana Del Rey with (edited-in) tigers, Born to Die, 2012.
Released in 2012, Born to Die was the title track of Lana Del Rey’s (stage name of Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, b 1985) second studio album. The music video, recorded at the Palace of Fontainebleau (a former royal château of the French court), was directed by Yoann Lemoine (b 1983) who placed the singer between two tigers. That effect was however a trick of the editing, the big cats filmed separately, which seems a sensible precaution. Lying some
55 km (34 miles) south-east of central Paris, the Château
de Fontainebleau is among the largest of the French royal châteaux and was for centuries both an occasional
residence and hunting lodge for monarchs, the name from Fontaine Belle-Eau
(spring of beautiful water), a natural fresh water spring located in the
English garden not far from the château.
The interior of the palace is in some places referred to as “Rococo” but
while some rooms were in the eighteenth century re-decorated with distinct
Rococo touches, the distinctive style dates from the late French Renaissance
and such was the thematic consistency it created what come to be known
throughout Europe as “the School of Fontainebleau” which historians of
architecture list as running from the mid sixteenth century to the early
seventeenth, the motifs influencing more than one strain of Mannerism. For students, the place is rich source of
examples of movements from the Renaissance, through early and high French
Baroque to the First Empire. It was
designated a national museum in 1927 and in 1981 was listed by UNESCO World
Heritage Site.
Men in frock coats: The “Big Four” at the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920), outside the Foreign Ministry headquarters, Quai d'Orsay, Paris.
Left to right: David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922), Vittorio Orlando (1860–1952; Italian prime minister 1917-1919), Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) and Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; US president 1913-1921).
Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; Prime Minister of France 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) was a physician who turned to politics via journalism, a not unfamiliar trajectory for many; at a time of national crisis, he undertook his second term as premier, providing the country’s politics with the stiffness needed to endure what was by then World War I (1914-1918); he was nick-named le tigre (the tiger) in honor of his ferociously combative political demeanour. In February 1919, while travelling from his apartment a meeting associated with the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920), he was shot several times, his assailant an anarchist carpenter & joiner, Émile Cottin (1896-1937) and two decades on, another leader would learn carpenters can aspire to be assassins. Le tigre was lucky, the bullets missing his vital organs although one which passed through the ribcage ending up lodged close to his heart; too close to that vital organ to risk surgery, there it remained until his death (from unrelated causes) ten years later. Cottin’s death sentence was later commuted to a ten year sentence and he would die in battle, serving with the anarchist Durruti Column during the early days of the Spanish Civil War. The Tiger’s response to his survival was to observe: “We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target six out of seven times at point-blank range. Of course this fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.” In the circumstances, deploring the state of French marksmanship displayed a certain sangfroid.
The
Sunbeam Tigers
Sunbeam Tiger, LSR run, Southport Beach, March 1926.
There
have been three Sunbeam Tigers, the first illustrious, the second fondly
remembered and the last so anti-climatic it’s all but forgotten. The first was a dedicated racing car, built
between 1923-1925 and, those being times when there was less specialization, it
was used both in circuit racing and, most famously, in setting the world Land
Speed Record (LSR). Although aerodynamic
by the standards of the time (the techniques of streamlining learned in World
War I (1914-1918) military aviation applied), there was little innovation in
the platform except for the engine, the nature of which ensured the Tiger’s
place in history. For grand prix events
conducted for cars with a maximum displacement of 2.0 litres (122 cubic
inches), Sunbeam had earlier built a two litre straight-six, the limitations
imposed by the relatively small size being offset by the use of the then still
novel double overhead camshafts (DOHC) which allowed both more efficient
combustion chambers and much higher engine speeds, thereby increasing
power. It was a robust, reliable power-plant
and when contemplating an attempt on the LSR, instead of developing anything
new or using the then popular expedient of installing a big & powerful but
heavy and low-revving aero engine, the engineers paired two of the blocks and
heads on a single crankcase, creating a 75° 3,976 cm3 (243 cubic
inch) V12. When supercharged, power
outputs as high as 312 hp (233 kW) were registered.
Sunbeam Tiger in 1990.
Deteriorating
weather conditions meant there wasn’t time even to paint the bodywork before
the Tiger was rushed to the banked circuit at Brooklands for testing in
September 1925 where performance exceeded expectations. Over the winter, further refinements were
made including a coat of most un-British bright red paint and it was in this
color (and thus nick-named “Ladybird”) it was in March 1926 taken to the flat,
hard sands of Southport Beach where duly it raised the LSR mark to 152.33 mph
(245.15 km/h). That was broken within a
year but the Tiger still holds the record as the smallest displacement ICE (internal
combustion engine) ever to hold the LSR and a century on, it’s a
distinction likely to be retained forever. After
the run on the beach, it returned to the circuits. A sister car was built and named
Tigress; fitted with one of the big Napier Lion W12 aero engines,
it still competes in historic competition but the Tiger is now a museum piece although, after 65 years, it did have a final
fling when in 1990 it made one last run and this time set a mark of 159 mph
(256 km/h).
Sunbeam Alpine (1959-1968) with the original
tail fins: 1961 (left) and 1963 (right). When in late 1958 the design was approved by the Rootes board, tail fins were thought still fashionable but the moment soon passed and with the release of the Series IV in 1964, they were pruned.
Although
successful in competition and the manufacturer of some much admired road cars,
financial stability for Sunbeam was marginal for most of the 1920s and the Great
Depression of the early 1930s proved its nemesis, the bankrupt company in 1934 purchased
by the Rootes Group which was attracted by Sunbeam’s production facilities
and their well-regarded line of HD (heavy duty) chassis for bus & truck
operators.
Rootes over the years used the
Sunbeam name in a desultory way, the vehicles little more than “badge
engineered” versions of their Hillman, Singer, Humber & Talbot lines but one aberration
was the Sunbeam Alpine, a small sports car (1959-1968).
Rootes had used the Alpine name before,
adopted to take advantage of the success enjoyed in the 1953 Alpine Rally but the
new roadster was very different.
Although the platform was taken (unpromisingly) from a small van (noted for its robustness and reliability but little else) with the
rest of the structure a mash up of components from the Rootes parts bin, as
a package it worked very well and the body was modern and attractive, owing
more to small Italian sports cars than the often rather agricultural British competition
from MG and Triumph. The rakish fins drew the
eye (not always uncritically) but they were very much of their time, taller even than
those on the
Daimler SP250 released the same year.
The Alpine was also pleasingly civilized with a heater which
actually worked, a soft-top which didn’t leak (at least not as often or to the same extent as some others), external
door handles and wind-up windows, none of those attributes guaranteed to exist on
most of the local competition.
It was
also commendably quiet, conversations possible and the radio able to be listened to even at cruising
speed, then something then novel in little British
roadsters.
1966
Sunbeam Tiger Mark IA.
With an
engine capacity initially of 1.5 litres (91 cubic inch), the Alpine was never
fast although that was hardly the point and the advertising included some
campaigns aimed at what was then known as the “ladies market”; that market
still exists but the industry now dare not speak its name. Product development included larger engines
would improve things but the performance deficit was better addressed when, in
1964, a version of the Alpine called the Tiger appeared, fitted with
Ford’s recently released 260 cubic inch (4.2 litre) “thinwall” V8 (the
so-called “Windsor” in honor the foundry in Ontario where the things were cast
and assembled), about to become well known from its use in both the Ford
Mustang and Carroll Shelby's (1923–2012) Cobra, the latter based on a much-modified AC Ace. The Windsor was called a “thinwall” because
genuinely it was small and light (by the standards of contemporary iron-block V8s)
but even so it only just fitted (once come frankly brutish modifications to the
engine bay were effected with hammers) and so tight was the fit a small hatch
was installed in the firewall (under the dashboard) so a hand could reach in to
change one otherwise inaccessible spark plug.
That notwithstanding, the package worked and all those who wrote test
reports seemed to enjoy the Tiger, noting the effortless performance, fine brakes (lifted unchanged from the Alpine!) and (within limits) predictable handling, all in something conveniently
sized. However, even in those more
tolerant times, more than one journalist observed that although the Ford V8
used was in the mildest state of tune Ford offered (the ones Shelby put in the Cobra producing over 100-odd HP (75 kW) more), it was
clear the classis was close to the limit of what could be (even in the more forgiving 1960s) deemed sensible for
road use.
Pleasingly, in the mid 1960s, there was in the US quite an appetite for cars not
wholly sensible for street use and late in 1966, a revised version was
released, this time with a 289 cubic inch (4.7 litre) Windsor V8 and although
there had been some attention to the underpinnings, it was now obvious that
while still in the placid state Ford used in station wagons and such, the
289's increased output exceeded the capability of the chassis. For the journalists of course, that was
highly entertaining and some were prepared to forgive, one cautioning only that
the Tiger:
“…doesn’t take
kindly to being flung around. It’s a car
with dignity as asks to be driven that way.
That doesn’t mean slowly, necessarily, but that there’s sufficient power
on tap to embarrass the incautious. But
if you treat it right, respecting it for what it is, the Tiger can offer
driving pleasure of a very high order.”
In the era,
there were other over-powered machines which could behave worse and those able
to read between the lines would know what they were getting but there may have
been some who were surprised and tellingly, the Tigers were never advertised to
the “ladies market” although one was in 1965 presented as the
traditional "pink prize" to Playboy’s PotY (Playmate of the Year). Presumably she enjoyed it and, now painted
"resale" red, the car still exists.
Jo Collins
(b 1945), 1965 PotY with her 1965 Sunbeam Tiger Mark I. All Tigers received the pruned fins
(introduced on the Series IV Alpines), the once raked elliptical taillights
assuming a vertical aspect.
The US was
a receptive market for the little hot rod and one featured in the Get Smart TV series, although it’s said
for technical reasons (the V8 version not having space in the engine
compartment for some of the props), a re-badged Alpine was used for some scenes
(the same swap effected for the 2008 feature film adaptation), a V8 exhaust
burble dubbed where appropriate, a trick not uncommon in film-making. At the corporate level of M&A (mergers
& acquisitions), changes were however were coming which would doom the
Tiger although it was an unintended victim.
Seeking a greater presence in Europe as well as a ranger of smaller
vehicles to offer in the US, Chrysler had first taken a stake in the Rootes
Group in 1964 and in 1967 it assumed full control. Chrysler was most interested in the
mainstream sedans but although the Tiger was a low-volume line, it was
profitable and the corporation’s original intention had been to continue
production but with Chrysler’s 273 cubic inch (4.4 litre) LA V8
substituted. Unfortunately, while 4.7
Ford litres filled it to the brim, 4.4 Chrysler litres overflowed; the Windsor
truly was compact. Allowing it to remain
in production until the stock of already purchased Ford engines had been
exhausted, Chrysler instead changed the advertising from emphasizing the “…mighty Ford V8
power plant” to the vaguely ambiguous “…an American V-8 power train”. Still a popular car in the collector
community, so easily modified are the V8s that few survive in their original
form and many have been fitted with larger Windsors, the 289 and 302 (4.9
litre) the most popular and some have persuaded even the tall-deck 351 (5.8) to
fit though not without modifications.
Sunbeam
Tigers: 1965 model with “Powered by Ford 260” badge (left), 1967 model with
“Sunbeam V8” badge (centre) and 1965 French market model with “Alpine 260”
badge (right).
It wasn’t
unknown for the major US manufacturers to use components from competitors,
something which happened usually either because of a technology deficit or to
do with licencing. However, they much
preferred it if what was used was hidden from view (like a transmission) so
Chrysler’s reticence about advertising what had become one of their cars being fitted
with Ford V8 was understandable. Not
only was the advertising material swiftly changed but so were the badges:
“Powered by Ford 260” giving way to “Sunbeam V8” for the rest of the Tiger’s
life. Unrelated to that however was the
curious case of Tigers sold in South Africa and some European markets where
they were designated variously as “Alpine 260” or “Alpine V8”.
On the silver screen: Sunbeam
Alpine 260 opposite Simca Aronde and behind Renault 16 in the Italian film
Come rubare la corona d'Inghilterra
(1967) by Sergio Grieco (1917–1982). The
title translates literally as “How to Steal the Crown of England” but in the
English-speaking world it’s better known as
Argoman
the Fantastic Superman. The film
garnered mixed reviews.
The reason
the “Tiger” name never made it to the largest European markets was because
Panhard in France was then selling a Tigre
and Messerschmitt in the FRG (Bundesrepublik
Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany; the old West Germany) 1949-1990),
held the trademark to Tiger. The German Tiger can be visualized as something like the cockpit of a World
War II (1939-1945) era Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter aircraft fitted with four
wheels and a 500 cm3 engine; it was as entertaining as it
sounds. Apparently on advice from Rootes’
French distributers (Société des
Automobiles Simca), it was decided just to use the Alpine name and the car
thus was advertised in France, Germany Austria & Switzerland variously as
the “Alpine 260” or “Alpine V8”, the latter making marketing sense in countries
not used to cubic inches as a measure although the imperial measure may have
been used to emphasize the US connection, Detroit's V8s deservedly enjoying a
reputation for smoothness, power and reliability.
What lay
beneath: Body tags for US market Tiger (left) and French market Alpine 260
(centre & right). Whether the 4.2 V8-powered
cars had “Alpine” or “Tiger” badges, all were designated on the body tags as “Alpine
260 V8”.
However, in
places such as Sweden and Monaco where there was no concern with violating
trademark law, the “Tiger” name was used, as it was for vehicles ordered by US
citizens for delivery in Europe.
Typically these were armed forces personnel able to buy through the
military’s PX (Post Exchange) stores and they enjoyed the benefit at the end of
their deployment of having their car shipped home to the US at no cost. Volumes into Europe were always low and the
sketchy records (assembled by Tiger owners clubs) suggest as few as seven Mark
II models were exported to Europe, three of which went to France and by then
the operation known as "Rootes Motors Overseas Ltd" had for all
purposes switched their advertising to “Sunbeam Alpine V8”.
On the
silver screen, with rear projection.
Cary Grant (1904–1986, left) with (pre-princess) Grace Kelly (1929–1982;
Princess Consort of Monaco 1956-1982, right) behind the wheel of 1953 Mark I
Sunbeam Alpine (in Sapphire Blue) in
To Catch a Thief (1955).
In 1955,
Sunbeam did release an Alpine Mark III but there was never a Mark II, “skipping
numbers” something not uncommon in aircraft and software but rare in
automobiles. For students of technology,
the long scene of Grace Kelly driving in To Catch a Thief (appearing mostly to be filmed through the windscreen)
is an example of the RPT (rear projection technique) used before CGI
(computer-generated imagery) technology existed. While much of the film was shot on-location
in Europe, the Alpine was shipped to the US for some of her driving scenes
because only in Hollywood were the big studios outfitted with the
rear-projection equipment able to emulate 360o settings. RPT obviously created new possibilities for
cinematographers but for directors there was the advantage of the driver not
being compelled to “keep their eyes on the road”, however bad an example this
may have set for impressionable audiences.
In the age of CGI, the RPT looks obviously fake but it was at the time
state-of-the-art and a companion piece to the vivid “Technicolor look” of the
era.
Grace Kelly and Cary Grant filmed with RPT in To Catch a Thief. In 1982, driving her Rover P6 (1963-1977) 3500 (1968-1977), she would die in an accident on a similar road.
When first
pondering the name to be used in Europe, within Rootes there may anyway have
been awareness of the French manufacturer Peugeot in 1964 forcing Porsche to
rename its new 901 to 911 (something which worked out OK) on the basis of the
argument they had an “exclusive right in France” to sell cars with three
numeral designation in France when the middle digit was a “0” (zero). That seems dubious given Mercedes-Benz had
for years been selling 200s & 300s and was about to release the 600 but the
EEC (the European Economic Community, the Zollverein which would evolve into
the EU (European Union)) wasn’t at the time governed by the “give way to the
Germans” rule which would come to characterize the EU so defer Porsche
did. Rootes was thus wise to avoid the
inevitable C&D (cease and desist letter) which may have been anticipated.
1965 PotY
Jo Collins with her pink Tiger.
Stranger
however is that Tigers sold in France were called “Alpine 260” despite (1) the
French manufacturer Alpine having first sold cars there in 1954 and (2) the “260”
being a reference to the V8 displacement in cubic inches (cid), imperial
measurements not used in wholly metric France (where a 4.2 (litre) badge might
have been expected). Sunbeam was able to
use the Alpine name because their original version (the one driven by Grace
Kelly) had first been sold in France in 1953, thus pre-dating the French
venture Automobiles Alpine, the
corporate identity of which wasn’t formalized until 1955.
1965 French
market Sunbeam Alpine 260 with after-market 14" Minilite wheels.
So, on the
basis of “prior use”, the Alpine name could in France be used, despite the
existence since 1954 of the sports cars produced by Dieppe-based Automobiles
Alpine. Whether the decision to append
an imperial “260” rather than a more localized “4.2” was the British adding
insult to injury isn’t known but the use of metric measurements in engine
displacement had for decades been the British practice, possibly reflecting the
early French dominance in the field (rather as terms like “fuselage”, “aileron”
and such were picked up in the English-speaking world because it was the French
who enjoyed a early lead in aviation and thus got to name the bits & pieces). Still, while
subtle cross-channel slights may sound improbably petty, that’s a quality not
absent either in international relations or commerce and not only were London
and Paris then squabbling over whether the Anglo-French SST (supersonic
transport) airliner should be called “Concorde” or the anglicized “Concord”, in
1963, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970; President of France 1959-1969) had vetoed
the UK’s application for membership of the EEC.
For that last diplomatic setback, the British may have had themselves to
blame because when in 1940 they offered de Gaulle sanctuary in London after the
fall of France, the Foreign Office allocated him offices on Waterloo Place and
overlooking Trafalgar Square. A
sensitive soul, neither Le Général nor Le Président ever forgave or forgot a
slight.
Carroll
Shelby, Sunbeam publicity shot for the US market, 1964.
Between
April 1964 and August 3763 Mark I Tigers were built. The 2706 “Mark IA” models which followed
between August 1965 and February 1966 were based on the Alpine Series V which
had a number of detail changes (most obviously the doors, hood (bonnet) and truck
(boot) lid having sharper corners and a vinyl rather than metal top boot for
the folding soft-top); while these now universally are listed as “Mark IAs”,
that was never an official factory designation.
The first Mark IIs weren’t built until December 1966 with production
lasting only until June the next year when Sunbeam’s stocks of Ford V8s was
exhausted and just 536 (although 633 is oft-quoted) were built. Although there were detail differences
between the Mark IA and Mark II, the fundamental change was the use of the 289
cubic inch (4.7 litre) engine and all but a few dozen were exported to the US.
Carroll Shelby invoiced Rootes US$10,000 to develop the original Tiger prototype and had expected to gain the contract for production on the same basis as Shelby American's arrangement with AC to produce the Cobra (ie he'd receive engineless cars into which he'd insert the V8s) but the process instead went the other way with Sunbeam importing the engines, contracting final assembly to Jensen. Shelby instead received a small commission for each Tiger sold and appeared in some of the early marketing material. He understood that despite (on paper) being superficially similar, the Tiger was a very different machine to the Cobra and, aimed at different markets, the two were really not competitors. Amusingly, Shelby's US$10,000 fee was paid in a "back-channel deal", the funds coming from Rootes' US advertising budget rather than the engineering department's allocation. That accounting sleight of hand was necessary because it was known to all the company's conservative chairman (Lord Rootes (1894–1964)), would never have approved such a project. He changed his mind after test-driving the prototype and ordered immediate production, living long enough to see it enjoy success.
Tigerish:
Lindsay Lohan imagined in cara gata
(cat face) by Shijing Peng.
One Sunbeam
Tiger variant which did however not enjoy success was the Tiger GT which was
supplied without a soft-top. It might
seem a strange notion that someone (unless they lived somewhere like the
Atacama Desert in Chile which enjoys an average annual rainfall around 0.1 mm
(0.00393699 of an inch)) would buy a convertible without a folding roof but in
the 1960s it really was a thing, Mercedes-Benz releasing such a version of
their W113 roadster (1963-1971). Introduced
in 1967 during the brief run of the 250 SL, Mercedes-Benz listed it officially
as the “SL Coupe” but journalists and the public (and not a few dealers)
quickly dubbed it the “California Coupe”, reviving an appellation which emerged
in 1959 to describe the stacked headlight assembly used for a number of models
between 1959-1973 because US lighting regulations outlawed the ovoid-shape
composite headlights used for the RoW (rest of the world) production. The rationale behind the label was apparently
that “California” was the most American thing imaginable. The California Coupe was enough of a success
to be carried over to 1968 when the 280 SL was released and the model remained
in the catalogue until the last W113s left the line in 1971; it’s believed some
1,100 were built. Chevrolet in the era allowed
buyers of the C2 Corvette (1963-1967) convertible to order their cars with the
choice of (1) a soft-top, (2) a hard-top or (3) both and while a majority
(35,892) chose both, of the 72,418 convertibles built 5,794 (just over 8%)
eschewed the folding roof. It’s true
some of those would have been bought for use in competition so the folding roof
would have been needless expense but it can be assume most were purchased to be
registered for use on the street.
1964 Sunbeam Tiger GT interior.
So the “hardtop
only” Tiger GT at the time probably seemed a good idea and it followed the
model of the Alpine GT, added to the range when the Series III (1963-1964) was
introduced (the versions with hard & soft-tops designated as Alpine STs
although use of “ST” has always been about as rare as that enjoyed by “Sports
Tourer” & “Gran Tourismo” which appeared in the early advertising copy. The GT was essentially a “luxury” model and
the most luxurious aspect was greater interior space, made possible by the area
taken by the top’s stowage compartment being allocated to a larger, padded rear
seat, albeit one really suitable only for children. The GT’s unique appointments included full
length pleated door panels (a padded arm rail a top), full carpeting (replacing
the ST’s practical but utilitarian rubber mats), wood-rimmed steering wheel and
burled walnut wood veneered facia for the dashboard. Additionally, the GT featured as standard
equipment some of the ST’s options including a clock, ammeter, cigar lighter
and glove-box courtesy light. The GT’s hard-top
was painted to match the body, additional sound insulation was fitted and the
carburetor even received a canister type air filter to minimise the “sucking
sounds” from the induction system. The GT’s
modifications were all about refinement rather than performance for as well as
being heavier, the GT received a slightly less powerful engine (80 HP against
the ST’s 87). Initially, the Alpine GT sold
well though in the US it may have been the lack of a soft-top which curbed
demand and when the Series V (1965-1968) Alpine was released, the GT no longer
appeared in the US catalogue.
Brochure shot of 1963 Sunbeam Alpine GT interior.
So, with
the Alpine GT having been well-received, it was logical for Rootes to include a
Tiger GT in the new range; accordingly, during August 1964, Jensen completed
was thought to be an initial batch of 15 Tiger GTs but they would prove to be
the last. Unlike the Alpine GT with its
detuned engine, the Tiger GTs had the same mechanical specification as other
Tigers and all 15 were shipped to US dealers where their “luxury” interiors seemed
to have a “shaming” effect on the more basic (vinyl & rubber) appearance of
the standard model, the distributers reporting to Rootes there was some market
resistance to the 200 Tigers which had arrived, the drab interior not helping persuade
buyers to spend some US$3,800 when Ford’s recently released Mustang offered the
same engine and transmission combination in a bigger package for rather less. The factory responded, adding to the Tiger’s
specification the burl walnut veneer facia for the dashboard and the wood rimmed steering
wheel (although the fancier door trims didn’t appear until the Mark IA
revisions). After that, the Tiger GT
project was allowed to lapse with none were built after the first 15, its sole
contribution to the line apparently inducing an upgraded interior for the
standard model.
1972 Hillman Avenger Tiger advertisement (left) and 1972 Avenger Tiger Mark II advertisement (right). The early Avengers (1972-1976) are remembered for their distinctive "boomerang (or hockey stick)" tail-lamps, a style later used by Mazda for the Cosmo (1975-1981 and sold in some markets as the RX-5). It's believed the rear spoiler was not wind tunnel tested, despite the claim the "special aerofoil on the boot" was there to "keep the Tiger hugging the road".
1972 Hillman Avenger Tiger Mark II in Sundance Yellow.
While
not quite the sublime to the ridiculous, the third and final Tiger certainly lacked the luster of its predecessors and was sold as a Hillman rather than a Sunbeam, the old Rootes group now owned by Chrysler. Based on the Hillman Avenger (1970-1981), a
competent if unexciting family car, the Avenger Tiger was initially a one-off built for motor shows (they used to be a thing) but such was the reaction a production run was arranged and, based on the Avenger GT, it was a genuine
improvement, fitted with dual Weber carburetors on a
high-compression cylinder head with larger valves and improved porting. The power increase was welcome but wasn’t so
dramatic as to demand any modification of the GT’s suspension beyond a
slight stiffening of the springs. On the
road, the well-sorted RWD (rear wheel drive) dynamics meant it was good to
drive and the performance was a notch above the competition at the same price point although Chrysler
never devoted the resources to develop it into a machine which could have been competitive with Ford’s Escort in racing and rallying. Despite that, when sold in the US as the Plymouth Cricket (1971-1972) the car won the demanding “Press on Regardless” rally although that wasn't enough to convince many Americans to buy the thing. The first run of 200-odd Tigers early in 1972 were all in “Sundance” yellow with a black stripe (and in case that was too subtle, a “Tiger” decal adorned
the rear quarter panels) but “Wardance” red was an option when an additional batch of 400 was made to meet
demand.
A poster
from Esso’s brilliantly successful “Put a Tiger in your Tank” campaign”.
Now, a remoteness
between a product and the motifs used in its advertising is unexceptional but
in 1959 when Esso in the US launched its “Put a Tiger in Your Tank” campaign,
the concept was still quite novel but the abstraction (full up your car with
Esso gas (petrol) and you’ll gain the power of a tiger) resonated and the
campaign is today recognized as one of the most successful of the era. Esso had, off and on, for decades used tigers as corporate symbols and the big cat had been the centre of a campaign in the UK in 1953 to promote
gas sales after the end of post-war petrol rationing but that tiger had been a
ferocious beast, something like the often hungry ones one would not wish meet in the wild. The documentary evidence from the
time suggests the Esso’s lethal looking Panthera
tigris made it “just another advertisement” but when the US agencies re-imagined
their big cat as something friendly and playful, it really caught the public imagination
and created a number of minor industries in children’s toys, key-chains, piggy
banks, buttons, pins, pens tiger masks, party glasses, coffee mugs, T-Shirts
and even “tiger tails”, sold at Esso-branded gas stations to be attached to gas
caps, the implication being to suggest there really was a “tiger in the tank”.
Esso’s
original tiger in its “Esso for Extra” campaign which didn’t capture the hearts of UK
consumers; perhaps memories of tiger hunting in the Raj were still too close.
The
key word clearly was “tiger” because the cat was never named and within the
corporation was referred to only as the “Whimsical Tiger”. Genuinely, the friendly looking tiger seems
to have transformed Esso’s image (it latter would suffer) and while the extent to which the campaign can
be credited with the boom in Esso’s sales (they booked increases notably higher
than their competitors), historians of the industry acknowledge the effect was
significant. The implications weren’t
lost on advertising executives who learned the lesson that an emotional
connection is often preferable to an intellectual one; while the UK’s earlier (zoologically a close to correct depiction) tiger
certain conveyed the power and energy of the charismatic creature, it was the
warm and friendly “Whimsical Tiger” which appealed to people and their
children, the latter anxious to nudge their parents to buy gas from Esso in the
hope of getting another plush toy tiger.
Pontiac GTO advertising, 1965 (G.T.O. also sometimes used in documents).
Pontiac definitely
had Esso’s “British Tiger” in mind when they began using the big cat in advertising
the GTO (1964-1974), the “male market” definitely the target and the messaging
all about power and aggression.
Introduced in late 1963, the GTO was “an option package” designed to
circumvent GM’s (General Motors) corporate-wide ban on such a thing existing and
although conceived as a niche product, immediately it proved so popular (and
profitable) that GM abandoned their principles and authorized on-going
production. The GTO is often referred to
as the “first muscle car” (a formula which would come to be explained as “a big
powerful engine from a large, heavy full-size put into a smaller, lighter vehicle)
and while that’s arguable, it was certainly the 1964 GTO which defined the
original 1960s “muscle car”. Actually,
the formula, on both sides of the Atlantic, had been in use since the inter-war
years but what was unique about the US of the mid-1960s was a combination of circumstances: A booming economy and a large and growing cohort
of males aged 17-25 with the cash or credit rating to afford to buy muscle
cars. Really, there was probably no
animal on earth better suited to advertising something like the GTO and soon
the imagery was all-pervasive, “Tiger Gold” added to the color chart. Even before the release of the GTO, Pontiac
had used a tiger theme in its advertising but it’s the GTO with which it became
most associated.
Pontiac GTO advertising, 1965. Now, were a company to use a tiger skin to try to sell something, they'd be cancelled. Times have changed.
The
original GTO wasn’t quite as muscular as the original press car provided to Car
& Driver magazine for their infamous “comparison test” against a Ferrari 250 GTO, printed in the March 1964 edition. That Pontiac GTO had not only a much bigger engine but was also
modified to the point it was close to race-ready and was certainly nothing like
the ones in showrooms but despite that deceptive and misleading trick, the ones
customers could buy possessed sufficient charm to convince over 32,000 people
to pay the retail price, some six times the marketing department’s
projections. Whether the use of tigers
in the advertising and promotional material much contributed to the popularity
isn’t known but as a piece of name association it worked not at all; by 1966,
by which time Pontiac was shipping close to 100,000 GTOs annually, it was
obvious males aged 17-25 had settled on the nickname “the Goat”, not an animal
which would have been an obvious choice to apply to a high-performance car with
youth appeal. However, that’s how the English
language works, and “the Goat” was a playful, phonetic shortening of GTO although recent revisionists have suggested it was an allusion to the car being
“the greatest of all time” (that link with “goat” coming much later) or in “eating
up the competition”, the GTO was emulating the goat’s reputation for eating
just about anything. There’s nothing to
support these quasi-theories and there’s no doubt the nickname came from
nothing but sound-play. Beginning in 1967, Pontiac switched the theme of its
advertising from the tigeresque to “The Great One”.
Another big, dangerous cat: Advertisement for the 1976
Mercury Cougar.
Despite the apparent implications, not until early in the twenty-first
century would “cougar” pick up the informal meaning: “an older woman who seeks
sexual relationships with much younger men”; Mercury truly was ahead of the
linguistic curve.The big cats have provided names for manufacturers to use for
cars; there have been Tigers, Lions, Jaguars, Cheetahs and Leopards (there is
even a Leopard tank, in production since 1965 and now in its third generation)
and there was also a Mercury Cougar.
Introduced in 1967 as a kind of up-market Mustang, it’s significance is
not only that immediately it was highly successful but that it was the last
truly successful Mercury; with some three million sold over 35-odd seasons, it
was the marque’s biggest selling nameplate although from the late 1970s,
Cougars bore scant resemblance, physically or conceptually to the classic
original. The press reports in 1967 made
much of Ford’s admission the Mercury was an attempt to “build a Jaguar”, noting
the statement was intended not to be read literally but rather an indication of
a wish to build the sort of car which would appeal to someone who would buy a
Jaguar. The consensus at the time was
Mercury had succeeded in building a fine car although whether many Jaguar
customers were convinced isn’t known.
Some of the Cougars produced in the first four seasons of its long life
were legitimate parts of the muscle car ecosystem but by 1976 when the above advertisement
appeared, built on the intermediate Ford Torino’s platform, the Cougar it was
little more than a slightly smaller Ford Thunderbird; that was bad enough but
things would get worse.
