Sunbeam Rapier mk iii - the underrated sporting 60s classic saloon!

Video Description

Drive this car yourself with a test drive at Drive Dad's Car - all details here: https://drivedadscar.com _____ Sunbeam Rapier The name ‘Rapier’ was used under two guises, from the mid 50s until the mid 70s, first as the ‘Series’ Cars of which this fits and then from the mid/late 60s as part of the Arrow cars range. Rootes had a number of names under the Rootes umbrella and instead of doing as British Leyland did in the 70s where they stole sales from themselves, Rootes tended to use the opportunity of various brands to build shared platforms, cross brand technology and canny investments which could benefit more than one name or model. Rootes recognised that the Minx was their ‘safe saloon’ and it was a steady choice for families - but what could they offer their customer who wanted a bit of spice in their life and the wind beneath their wings whilst getting that saloon benefit? Well, that’s where the Rapier came in. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to get a Series 1 and 2 at some point, so I’m going to to largely skip over their development, but essentially, the Rapier offered something far more exciting than the Minx with which it initially shared an engine with. As I mention later, Rootes like many American names, updated their models every few years so we quickly go from Rapier launch in the mid 50s to the Series iii we’re testing today, which launched in the autumn of 1959. The convertible we’re testing here today was priced at £735 at launch - minus purchase tax and extras and there were just over 15,000 of the cars produced. We spoke of the Rapier offering something a little more exhilarating than the Minx, but many today will see these at shows and not realise they had an incredible rallying history and a successful one to boot. At the time of this car being sold in 1960 they were riding high, being crowned number 1 british car at Monte Carlo for the third year running and number 1 British car at the Alpine Rally. The car is fitted with the engine from the Alpine and If you read brochures, the engine is dubbed the rallymaster and was designed to play up to the rallying finesse of the car and was said to give a lively sports performance, but with the added benefit of reliability and economy. The 1500 engine was giving 73 bhp and a whopping top speed of over 90 miles per hour. To give that some context, motorways had only just begun to appear at the end of the 50s so for the vast majority of owners, this power essentially gave them exhilarating performance far surpassing what was needed for Britain’s network of windy small roads. Interestingly, they made some clever changes to the engine including fitting an 8 port ally head with increased compression ratio, a new sportier camshaft was fitted and redesigned valves. The gearbox also benefitted from some tweaks and the changes made gave higher ratios on second, third and fourth gear with reduced angle of gear lever movement. This meant shorter lever travel and snappier changes - which you’ll see on our test drive really counts - even at lower, slower speeds - but was probably enormously beneficial when rallying or racing. Rootes recognised the power and speed meant the suspension had to change and they fitted the car with fully indepedent front suspension with new, large capacity telescopic shock absorbers. The system, developed in a world where people were constantly greasing this, that and the other, was designed to be easy care and highly efficient. The car, if you’ve never seen one before, is a fair size is 13ft, 6 and a half inches long and 5ft and half an inch wide. In modern money that’s roughly about 4.1 metres by 1.5 metres. Good things never last for long and after being introduced in the autumn of 1959, the car was replaced by the Series 3a in 1961.