Works Sunbeam Rapier

As a 1960 Sunbeam Rapier drifted through long fast bends on the top of the Downs above Goodwood House and the Goodwood circuit, the tail hanging out just as the car disappeared out of the sun and sped through the dappled light of the Sussex forest, one of the least well-known stories of a racing rally car emerged, and with it the tale of its exotic history and special drivers. European Editor Ed McDonough sampled the Rootes Competition Department’s only known surviving racing Sunbeam Rapier, which was converted from the world rally stage to an equally successful race career, and passed through the skilled hands of young Ricardo Rodriguez on the way.

If you attempted to summarize the historical development of the British motor industry, you would start with a complex mix of Englishmen and Frenchmen… Roesch, Talbot, Coatalen… who were part of the early Sunbeam, Talbot and Darracq empire, and you would end with Germans and Japanese turning Rovers and Triumphs into BMWs and Hondas. Somewhere in the middle of that, in the late 1930s, a number of English concerns were rationalized into what became the Rootes Group, some 20 years after Sunbeam and Talbot linked up in 1919.