Remarks pre­pared for a nation­al meet­ing of Tigers East/Alpines East, which cir­cum­stances pre­vent­ed me from attend­ing. The text includes remarks about the Sun­beam Har­ring­ton Le Mans, which are post­ed sep­a­rate­ly.

“You wouldn’t believe how slow my Sunbeams were”

It sounds blas­phe­mous, but I’ve nev­er been able to relate to Fer­raris, pos­si­bly because I could nev­er afford one. Give me a quirky Eng­lish rig with an inter­est­ing past and a shape you don’t see every day. There’s some­thing about leather and wal­nut, the way the rain beads on the bon­net…. It reminds you of the time when almost every­body in Britain could build a sports car, and many did. As an old Tri­umph work­er said when the last TR6 left the line: “It rides hard and smells of oil. They just don’t make cars like that anymore.”

Sun­beam-Tal­bot had a good com­pe­ti­tion pedi­gree before the Sec­ond World War. But in 1935 the firm was bought by the Rootes Group, William and his broth­er Regi­nald. They were inter­est­ed in pro­duc­tion not com­pe­ti­tion, so not much hap­pened for awhile.

Enthu­si­asm revived when a suc­cess­ful ral­ly dri­ver, Nor­man Gar­rad, joined the com­pa­ny as com­pe­ti­tions man­ag­er. After the war, Rootes launched a two-liter sports saloon, the Sun­beam-Tal­bot 90. Nor­man thought he could make it into a ral­ly winner.

Dri­ving a 90 in 1952,  Stir­ling Moss won fifty pounds by fin­ish­ing sec­ond behind Sid­ney Allard in the pun­ish­ing Monte Car­lo Ral­ly. This con­vinced Nor­man that Rootes might have a com­pet­i­tive car after all. Moss wasn’t sure. “You wouldn’t believe how slow my Sun­beams were,” Sir Stir­ling lat­er told my friend, the late motor­ing writer Gra­ham Rob­son. Gra­ham replied: “Yes I would!”

Finding your Rootes

Regi­nald and Bil­ly Rootes were empire builders who envi­sioned a kind of mini-Gen­er­al Motors. By the late For­ties they con­trolled four old-line com­panaies: Hill­man, Hum­ber, Singer and Sun­beam-Tal­bot. I’ve owned six of their cars, at least one of each make except for Singer. I am a cer­ti­fied “Rootes-oholic.” Or maybe just certifiable.

For three years run­ning, teams of Sun­beams appeared at the great French endurance race, the Twen­ty-four Hours of Le Mans. You can read about them in my book, Tiger Alpine Rapi­er: Sport­ing Cars from the Rootes Group. But don’t pay the sil­ly prices quot­ed on Ama­zon. Use Bookfinder.com to find a cheap­er copy.

My first Rootes prod­uct was a pow­der blue 1962 Sun­beam Alpine Series 2, which I bought new and ran the wheels off, includ­ing a mem­o­rable twelve-hour overnight ral­ly in Fair­field Coun­ty, Con­necti­cut. It replaced a Tri­umph TR3, and get­ting back into a car with roll-up win­dows and a top you could put up with­out a tool kit was true luxury.

Hilda, the friendly Hillman

Years lat­er came Hil­da, a 1960 Minx con­vert­ible. Remem­ber the three posi­tion top with the inter­me­di­ate “lan­dau” posi­tion? Hil­da was a love­ly low-mileage car with­out any rust.

She had one pecu­liar and quaint­ly Eng­lish trait. When­ev­er you drove through a pud­dle deep­er than two inch­es, she just stopped. The drill was to get out, remove the dis­trib­u­tor cap, dry the insides out with a rag, and voilà—she was off and run­ning again.

My fond­est mem­o­ry of Hil­da was dri­ving flat out at the Bridge­hamp­ton, Long Island road course. Hil­da was so slow you could dri­ve the whole track, hair­pins and all, with your foot flat on the floor and nev­er come to grief. This proved to be a good thing. Far behind a TR5 down the straight­away, I eas­i­ly dodged its fly­ing bon­net when it came unstuck. It flew past like an errant bat or a stealth bomber. It is a won­der we all didn’t go to jail that day.

There’s safety in Humbers

Not many Rootes col­lec­tors care about Hum­bers, but they might be miss­ing some­thing. My 1967 Imperial—last year for the big lux­u­ry Humbers—was one of the nicest cars I’ve owned, with its smooth and qui­et 3-liter six, swathed with Con­nol­ly hides, wool and wal­nut. It was the top of the line, with a body by Thrupp and Maber­ly in Lon­don. Rootes bought that coach­build­ing com­pa­ny to han­dle the final fin­ish on its lux­u­ry cars.

Nev­er mind the broad chromi­um smile and the chunky lines. The Impe­r­i­al was as qui­et as a bank vault—a won­der­ful road car and a good han­dler despite its bulk. It was a Series 5, with the squared-off roofline and large glass area. I gave it up after a few years of hunt­ing for spare parts. The sup­ply in the USA is not large, and was twice laid up for months for lack of a cru­cial part.

Hum­ber rat­ed a chap­ter in my sport­ing Rootes book. The motor­ing writer Michael Sedg­wick, our beloved “Sedge­war­bler,” said: “Lang­worth is going way over the top with that one. All I can remem­ber about Hum­bers is that they gave me a bad case of mal de mer every time I drove one.” Oh well!

Few real­ize this, but the odd­ly named Super Snipe (down-mar­ket from the Impe­r­i­al) actu­al­ly com­pet­ed with dis­tinc­tion. In the 1950 Monte Car­lo Ral­ly, Nor­man Gar­rad fit­ted out a Mark II for the Dutch dri­vers Mau­rice Gat­sonides and K.S. Baren­deg, who fin­ished sec­ond in class. Snipes also fin­ished near the top of their class in the 1962-63 East African and RAC Rallies.

Meet the Tiger

But this is the 60th Anniver­sary of the Rootes Sun­beam Tiger, so let’s get on to most excit­ing car Bil­ly and Reg built. I am one of the dimin­ish­ing few who set out to dri­ve one the moment it was announced—and bought one new a few months later.

“The orig­i­nal Sun­beam Tiger,” wrote Mike Bum­beck in Hem­mings Clas­sic Car, “was a beast­ly V-12 built in 1926 for set­ting land speed records at the hands of Major H.O.D Seg­rave. The mighty Tiger was lat­er con­fig­ured to run flat out around the Brook­lands high-banked track. This alto­geth­er deter­mined race car could hard­ly be thought of as light, agile, or friend­ly. The next Sun­beam Tiger, named after the orig­i­nal, was a dif­fer­ent car in every way.”

I vivid­ly remem­ber my first encounter with the Tiger six­ty years ago. I was a penu­ri­ous two-striper in the U.S. Coast Guard. I had no right even to think I could afford one.

But I’d owned an Alpine, and the idea of an Alpine with that sweet lit­tle Ford V-8, con­jured up by the great Car­roll Shel­by, was excit­ing. So I tod­dled off to the Rootes show­room on Park Avenue in Man­hat­tan to see what this new car was about and maybe talk them into let­ting me dri­ve one.

The demo was black, with a tan mock-pigskin inte­ri­or. The first thing I saw was the wal­nut instru­ment panel—so dif­fer­ent from that non­de­script grey dash on my old Alpine. I climbed in and noticed the sec­ond thing: a 140 mph speedometer.

“I’ve got to get one!”

Remem­ber, I’d been dri­ving an Alpine, so the rest of this car seemed more or less famil­iar. But not the driving!

The plate glass win­dows of the Rootes show­room retract­ed into the street, so you could lit­er­al­ly dri­ve a car off the floor. They rolled one down and I exit­ed onto Park Avenue. Gin­ger­ly, I worked my way to the water­front, got onto the East Side Dri­ve and put my foot down. Light­ning struck! I had one thought: I’ve got to get one of these!

On Sep­tem­ber 14th, 1965, I bought B9471128. (Does that make it the 128th built? I’m not sure.) It was Mid­night blue, with a fac­to­ry hard­top paint­ed to match, and one of the bet­ter-grained wal­nut dash­boards (they varied).

It cost $3902, a king’s ran­som. Still, that was only $100 more than the noisy, hard-rid­ing, vast­ly over­rat­ed Austin-Healey 3000, $1700 less than a Jaguar E-type, $2000 less than Shelby’s already leg­endary Cobra.

I put 25,000 miles on it before trad­ing it in on an air con­di­tioned VW Kar­mann Ghia two years lat­er. Yes, I know—foolishness! But at the time it made sense, with the long, hot busi­ness  trips I was then oblig­ed to endure. (The Ghia was like my Hill­man. You could dri­ve it all day with your foot to the floor and nev­er be arrested.)

With its effort­less per­for­mance, that Tiger was the most soul-sat­is­fy­ing two-seater I ever owned.  It was also one of the cars I should nev­er have sold—as it kept remind­ing me by reappearing!

The cat came back

Then, back came my Mark I to haunt me—twice. The first was a night in 1969, out­side Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, when I spot­ted it under the flood­lights at a used car deal­er­ship. I pulled over and looked inside. Sure enough, there was the burn mark I’d made with my pipe next to the con­sole ash­tray. Inci­den­tal­ly, the odome­ter now showed 5000 few­er miles than it had when we trad­ed it in.

Recall­ing what fun that car had been, I was so excit­ed that I for­got the speed lim­it and was imme­di­ate­ly tick­et­ed by a state troop­er. Through a mutu­al friend in the car busi­ness, I tried to buy it back at a trade dis­count, but the deal­er wouldn’t budge.

Then in 2017, there it was again, adver­tised in Hem­mings, by the same own­er since 1984! The val­ue had increased some­what, however…

By that time I’d already acquired anoth­er Tiger, but #1128 seemed to have aged well: still with the smooth dark blue paint job, still with the hard­top. The soft top had been replaced with a light blue non-stock top, the front bumper guards were miss­ing and the wheels were changed, But all in all it still looked good. I hope it is hap­py and healthy, wher­ev­er it is. If any­body knows how to track it, I’d sure like to know.

Why the Tiger failed

How could so fine a sports car fail? That is a short, sad sto­ry. The Tiger was nev­er a hot sell­er. I’ve talked to deal­ers who were flog­ging left­overs at cost in order to get rid of them by 1966. Had things been oth­er­wise, the wealthy cor­po­ra­tion that was Chrysler—which acquired Rootes in 1965—would have kept it in production.

In Rootes show­rooms, the Tiger was an anom­aly com­pared to the Hill­mans (should I say Hill­men?), Singers and Hum­bers. It also looked too much like the cheap­er, slow­er Alpine. Unique styling is vital in a car like this. And the com­pe­ti­tion was tough. In 1965 you could buy a flashy Corvette Sting Ray for as lit­tle as $300 more than a Tiger, and 24,000 Amer­i­cans did. The Tiger lacked that essen­tial vis­i­bil­i­ty which made the String Ray and E-type suc­cess­ful in the vital Amer­i­can market.

What all this led to is well known. After a half-heat­ed attempt to stuff in a Valiant V8, to avoid sell­ing a Chrysler prod­uct with a Ford engine, Chrysler sim­ply dumped the Tiger. Pay no atten­tion to the intrigu­ing, well-known pho­tos of “future” designs. They are tri­fles light as air. No Chrysler exec­u­tive ever came close to com­mis­sion­ing a pro­to­type. Only about 7000 were built between 1964 and 1967. The Tiger expired because it didn’t sell.

One more for the road

In 2013, I found anoth­er Tiger: a red 1966 Mark Ia. It had a straight, rust-free body and a flaw­less “resale red” paint job, but need­ed lots of mechan­i­cal work, new wheels and a new dash. I hung in there with it for eight years, an expen­sive restora­tion. It lives now in Mass­a­chu­setts, with a col­lec­tor of V-8 sports cars.

Some­how, I nev­er warmed to it as I did to our orig­i­nal Mark I. Chrysler was build­ing them by now, and engaged in a cer­tain amount of cheap­en­ing. The slick met­al cov­ers that so neat­ly hid the Mark I con­vert­ible top were replaced by a vinyl boot. The Sun­beam let­ters were shaved from the nose. The cowl showed seams and square bon­net cor­ners where the Mark Is had round­ed cor­ners and seam­less joints. Mem­o­ries of our Mark I were still too strong, I guess.

Still, six Rootes cars over a life­time isn’t a bad tes­ti­mo­ny. That’s at least three more than Win­ston Churchill owned, and he liked them fine. So did I.

Further reading

“Har­ring­ton Le Mans: Sunbeam’s Love­ly Gran Tur­is­mo,” 2020.

“Cars & Churchill: Blood, Sweat and Gears, Part 3, Hum­ber,” 2023.

“Che­quered Past: Of Eng­land and the Auto­mo­bile,” 2023.

“The Vin­tage Tri­umph and Tri­umphs in My Life,” 2015.

“Auto­mo­bile Quar­ter­ly: The Mem­o­ries,” 2021.