SUNBEAM RAPIER

A combination of American style and British feel is the core of the Sunbeam Rapier’s appeal, and this Rootes Group icon is a distinctly engaging classic. Report: Phil White. Pictures: Bob Marsden

In Latin, Audax means ‘bold.’ It is also the name of a sport which involves many people cycling long distances within a time limit. So in many ways the Rootes Group’s Audax project was well named, producing as it did a long-lived range of rather dashing cars.

It was a platform engineering concept which would produce the Hillman Minx and Singer Gazelle in saloon, convertible and estate form, the Hillman Husky three-door estate, and a commercial van called the Commer Cob. Audax models ensured the group’s survival between 1955 and 1967, and the most stylish of them all was a pillarless coupé named the Sunbeam Rapier.

The Rapier was actually the first Audax model launched, and the last to be replaced. It sold well, and with good reason. Britain began in the mid-1950s to look forwards from the drab times of post-war rationing. Consumers started to demand stylish products, and if the product you desired was a rather rakish coupé, the Rapier was bound to catch your eye.

French-american designer Raymond

Loewy was a titan of post-war industrial design. He drew houses and home appliances, designed the livery for Air Force One, and his agency styled several stunning Studebakers. Rootes employed Loewy in a consultative role to set the styling language of the Audax cars. The American influence is clear in the first generation of the Rapier, and remains discernible in its four succeeding revisions.

Because the Rapier evolved in five distinct iterations, or Series, its admirers – of which there are many – tend to favour one over the others. Some love the two-tone paint and column shift of the Series I, while many favour the Series III which shared its excellent 1494cc, twin-carb four-pot engine with the Sunbeam Alpine sports car. But we are focussing here on the Series V model, which was developed to prolong the Audax Rapier’s life from 1965 to 1967, when the all-new fastback Rapier that I remember from my childhood finally emerged from a very slow development phase. The Series V is a goodlooking car. It has a rather cute snub nose detailed by chrome grilles, bumper and headlamp surrounds. The side windows drop down to leave a pillarless profile, a feature that Neil Lamond of the Sunbeam Rapier OC says attracts great attention at shows and offers occupants a wonderfully large and open airflow in summer heat. Further back, the roofline curves back on itself to accommodate a curved rear screen that settles into finned rear wings. Over the years the same basic profile was simplified. Although the Series V looks much more old-fashioned than its BMC contemporaries, it is by far the most British-looking Rapier, an attitude that rather suits it.

The Series V also packs an excellent engine, which would power the next generation of Rootes cars, dubbed Arrow by the company and Hillman Hunters by everyone else. It was a 1725cc four-cylinder unit, with an alloy head and a five-bearing crank. Rootes gave it modern touches such as an alternator rather than a dynamo, and electrics wired to negative earth. For its time, the Series V produced respectable performance – it would canter to 60mph in 14.1 seconds and on to a top speed of 95mph.

The interior of the Series V is very British, and very much of the late 1960s. As a result, it’s a rather lovely thing. Gone are the two-tone seats of earlier generations, replaced by monotone vinyl chairs. The dash is a slab of polished wood veneer, sprinkled with chromebezelled dials and switchgear in a surprisingly logical order. Their chrome rings are repeated in the two-spoke steering wheel.

The Rapier’s chassis is rather conventional rear-wheel-drive fare, with fully independent front suspension employing coil springs and swinging links, leaf springs at the rear and front disc brakes. But the car handles pretty well, and can be driven in a fairly sporting manner. A few owners do so nowadays, but for most people this is the perfect car for a countryside amble on a warm day, punctuated by a blanket-based picnic in its shade.

The Rapier is a fairly easy classic to run, because owner club support is readily available and many components were used across a number of Rootes Group models. Rust is a far more dangerous foe than mechanical failure.

Rapier prices tend to favour the Series I and Series III, leaving the Series V a little neglected. This means that for very reasonable money you can acquire not only the most mechanically accomplished Rapier, but also one of the rarer variants – it was a 1950s car pushing its luck in the brave new world of the late 1960s and only 3759 Series V Rapiers were made. That was then though, and right now this rather cool little coupé is something of a bargain – if you can find one and persuade the owner to part with it.