The Sunbeam Alpine probably ranks as the ‘forgotten’ classic British sports car – if one excludes low-production specialist models, then the Alpine is badly overshadowed in modern viewpoints by MG, Triumph, Austin-Healey and Lotus. That’s something of a shame, since the Sunbeam boasts a longer heritage than any of them – the name dates back to the 1900s (and further back than that in the realm of bicycles and motorbikes) and Alpines have been on the road since the early 1950s. You could still buy an Alpine until the mid-1970s. But one issue the Alpine always had when it came to sporting credibility was that in all its forms – whether the original roadster, the Ford Thunderbird-lookalike sportster or the final fastback – was that it was always closely related to an ordinary Rootes saloon.
In the case of the ‘Series’ sports car as seen here, the Alpine was one of the many derivatives of the Rootes ‘Audax’ platform. And in keeping
