Welcome to The Sunbeam Experience
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Sunbeam Sportscars Introduction
Sunbeam was a marque registered by John Marston Co. Ltd of Wolverhampton, England, in 1888. The company first made bicycles, then motorcycles and cars from the late 19th century until about 1936, and applied the marque to all three forms of transportation. A Sunbeam was the first British car to win a Grand Prix race, and set a number of land speed records. In 1935 the company was purchased by the Rootes Group, which continued to use the Sunbeam marque and produced some of their most popular models such as the Tiger and Alpine.
In 1938 Rootes created a new marque called Sunbeam-Talbot which combined the quality Talbot coachwork and the current Hillman and Humber chassis and was assembled at the Talbot factory in London.
The Sunbeam Alpine is a sporty two-seat open car from Rootes Group's Sunbeam car marque. The original was launched in 1953 as the first vehicle from Sunbeam-Talbot to bear the Sunbeam name alone since the 1935 takeover of Sunbeam and Talbot by the Rootes Group. Muscle car version of the later versions were also built, as the Sunbeam Tiger featuring Ford's new 164 hp (122 kW) 260 cu in (4.3 L) Windsor V8 engine. The Tiger was widely known from the opening credits of the television series Get Smart, as Agent Maxwell Smart's car.
Chrysler purchased a controlling stake of the Rootes Group in 1964. The Tiger was dropped in 1967 after an abortive attempt to fit it with a Chrysler engine, and the Hillman Imp–derived Stiletto disappeared in 1972. The last Sunbeam produced was the "Rootes Arrow" series Alpine/Rapier fastback (1967–76), after which Chrysler, who had purchased Rootes, disbanded the marque.
Website News
- Thursday March 7, 2024
- Added new website The Elva Experience
- Friday July 7, 2023
- Changed forum message score display so scores are only shown if 5 or more members have voted.
- Wednesday June 8, 2022
- Added "about X time duration later..." text between posts in a topic if there has been more than a week between posts (also useful when a very old topic is resurrected)
- Wednesday June 8, 2022
- Added New Member flag to newly registered members for increased safety (scammers almost always use a newly created account).
- Wednesday June 8, 2022
- Added "Topic Creator (OP)" to topic read pages to flag replies by the creator of the thread.
- Tuesday April 27, 2021
- Defer non-critical CSS and JS to speed up page loading
- Monday April 19, 2021
- New Stripe membership payment system launched
- Tuesday March 9, 2021
- Added three new websites: The Vintage Race Forum, The Lotus Experience, and The Small4x4 Forum
- Monday March 8, 2021
- Completed media file storage migration
- Monday April 27, 2020
- Members can now change their home site from the account edit area
Legal Disclaimers
The author, Corvus Digital Corp, believes to the best of his knowledge the information contained in this website to be correct, however no warranty is made as to its accuracy. Corvus Digital Corp disclaims any liability for financial loss, property damage or injury in connection with use of this information. Any trademarked names are property of their respective trademark holder and are used for identification purposes only. Portions of this website may be copyrighted by other individuals or organizations. The opinions published by members on this website including but not limited to the forums, library and journals do not necessarily state or reflect the views of Corvus Digital Corp. Publication on this website should not be considered an endorsement.
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About This Website
This site was launched in March 2013 by Skye Nott as part of The AutoShrine Network.
All design and content is © Corvus Digital Corp unless otherwise noted.
This website is not in any way connected with, or authorised by, Sunbeam, Rootes Group, or the Chrysler Motor Corporation.
Photo credit to Mike Roberts for the photograph of his beautiful Sunbeam Tiger V8 in the page header. The derived work is released under the terms of the CC BY-SA 2.0 license.