Hard-driven rally-spec Sunbeam-talbot Alpine resurrected to Rolls-royce standards

That’s the restorer’s philosophy of this Sunbeam Alpine. It’s a good job too, because its open top was matched by an open bottom on arrival

Low point ‘Approaching a restoration you cannot always foresee hidden problems, such as the bodges applied to the rear wings of the Sunbeam. They needed careful repairs’ Ken Sparkes

What do you do when you’re a Rollsroyce and Bentley restorer, and you want to rebuild your beloved touring car? You keep it in-house and put it through the business, right?

Nope, you send it out. In the case of Sunbeam Alpines, both the Sunbeamtalbot type and the later ‘series’ Alpines, all roads lead to Ken Sparkes. As well as numerous Alpines in various stages of restoration, including one of the 1954 works rally cars, plus an ex-works Rapier rally car, there’s an ‘OO gauge’ Commer van parked outside, waiting to be finished. It came from Belgium and will eventually become right-hand drive.

On our visit there’s also an AC 16-80 Tourer being rebodied, plus an SS100, with another due in from the US. Ken also builds traditional ash-frame bodies, because he started his working life as a joiner, which gives him the unique insight of someone who has experience in the worlds of timber and metal.

So why would the owner of a restoration business send his own car out for restoration? ‘It was a management decision,’ says Harvey Wash. ‘We have a plethora of old Rolls-royces and Bentleys in various stages of restoration or just waiting, and we own a farm as well, so my wife said, “Just this once…” We even bought a black saloon as a fill-in to use while this was with Ken.’

Body and chassis

Harvey had been enjoying his Alpine for a couple of years before sending it for a sorely needed restoration. ‘I once got an award at a concours for the most original car,’ says Harvey. ‘It should have been for the most rusty. When we were driving along, my wife could see the white lines on the road. But, though it was extremely rotted, all the trim was there. Not only that, the steering wheel was also intact, original and unrestored which is unusual.

‘The thing is, nothing’s impossible but it can be very difficult. The hardest part of the whole job was making the decision to invest the money in a restoration that would cost more than the car was worth. But having been restoring Rolls-royces since the Sixties nothing daunts me. I know there’s always a way around a problem – everything is do-able.’

The chassis on these cars are like locomotives, with side strengthening pieces near the engine taking the depth of the rails to 14in at one point. But the bodies, made by Mulliners of Birmingham, rust terribly, and they’re all slightly different. The windscreen frames are individually stamped and only fit one car, and the trim parts are individually pencil-marked to each car.

Luckily, Ken has a unique skill set and the right sort of attitude that makes it possible to see even the most impossible-looking projects through. ‘My father was a motor mechanic who used to teach apprentices after World War Two, so I had an informal apprenticeship at home. He taught me to weld, then I did a welding course, a body course and I learnt to spray.

‘But he didn’t want me to go into the motor trade so I became an apprentice joiner. I did that for about ten years. At school I wanted to be an artist, but there was no money in it. I still paint. You have to have an idea of the vision and the concept, especially with the shapes of these cars. I try to advise customers on colours.’

‘I started doing my own cars, then worked as a subcontractor to another restorer in 1984 because of my woodworking skills.

‘Corrosion is the biggest issue with Alpines. They rust really badly and it’s better to ask, “where don’t they go?” The rear of the car rusts the worst. The chassis rots, mostly where the rails pass under the rear axle, plus the rear outriggers. The spare wheel pan can end up resting on the fuel tank. The chassis can crack behind the front axle, mainly on the side the steering box is mounted.

‘The front wings bolt on and aren’t available but you can adapt saloon parts. They have a little triangular fillet welded on and leaded. So if you had an accident and needed to change a wing, you kept that bit to transfer to the replacement. Labour was cheaper then. The doors are cut-down drophead coupé items.’

Harvey explains, ‘It started off as a body restoration, but then we decided to do a frame-up rebuild. We took the view that it was for ourselves rather than a commercial project, so we wanted the absolute highest standards.’

Ken adds, ‘Though I have people helping me now, I did all the bodywork on Harvey’s car myself. The back half of the body was poor, and it needed floors and wing repairs plus the back corners of the bonnet where water gets in and can’t get out, then it rots the bonnet crossmember. So we had to let metal in there. Sometimes we have to cannibalise another car to get the right sections and profiles. Adding to the complication, all the bonnet louvres are different lengths.’

There are three truly terrifying looking Alpine projects next door, but Ken is unremittingly positive about their restoration prospects. ‘However bad they are they will recover. The problem is that in the Sixties and Seventies they were cheap cars that were just bodged up. So now we’re undoing all that poor quality work. Rear wings are available again and they’re much better than they were, so I know they’re going to fit.’

‘Once I’d done the chassis I put the body back on to get the dimensions right, then we always weld in braces before we lift it off or cut the sills off. It took about five solid weeks of work to repair the body before it went to Rob for paint, and each complete restoration takes a year to 18 months. Series Alpines are much easier because more is available, and of course the price of Tigers helps boost their value.’

Rob Ransley has been painting cars for 50 years, and all Ken’s cars go to R Ransley Vehicle Renovations for finishing, as do a lot of Maseratis from Bill Mcgrath.

Rob takes us through the process. ‘The painting doesn’t take long but the preparation does. Normally it’ll arrive blasted and in red oxide. We don’t mind doing the odd bit of welding and repair. It’s hard getting the doors to fit because they’ve all been welded, and they’re difficult to adjust because the hinges are massive. We don’t use lead any more, we use a modern filler with a high metal content that sets rock hard – so hard that you can drill it and tap it. You can file it but it’s hard to sand. We put that over the welds and it normally holds them pretty well.

‘There are an awful lot of bits on an Alpine that have to be painted off the car as well as the wings and doors, such as the dashboard and valances, so you end up with a massive pile of parts that need painting separately, which adds to the cost. With these metallics it’s a base coat then three coats of two-pack lacquer, which is a lot. They’re tricky to match.

‘After painting we put the doors and wings back on so the car can be moved, then it goes back to Ken and he’ll have them back

High point ‘The first time seeing the car back from the paint shop resplendent in Sapphire Blue, ready to put back together’ Ken Sparkes

off to fit the engine. We had Harvey’s car here for two or three months; even though the work didn’t take that long, we don’t like to rush.’

All of the brightwork was rechromed, including the vulnerable grille slats which, like the steering wheel were in good condition, which is unusual because they get bent when people push on them. And this car sports a discreet innovation – an extra high-level brake light. ‘Well, it’s low level actually,’ says Ken, ‘as we couldn’t find anywhere to put one at high level.’ Alpine tail lights are quite small and not always easily spotted by drivers used to modern lights, so high-intensity LEDS were cleverly incorporated into the reversing light housings to provide additional brake lights. This practical modification is invisible until they light up. The semaphore indicators are still in place, but left disconnected on the grounds that the average modern driver wouldn’t understand them even if they noticed them in the first place.

Harvey’s car is holding up very well seven years after Rob painted it, considering how often it’s been toured hard over the Alps. There’s just a few small stone-chips up front, a little sinkage over the weld line on the driver’s door and a couple of small cracks in the lower corners of the boot aperture, though that might have stemmed from an unfortunate incident in the Alps, as Harvey recalls. ‘In 2010 on a tour of the 1952 Alpine routes I got a bit overenthusiastic in the dark and went over a precipice. It got a bit bent underneath, but we were able to drive it out.

Engine

This was one of the last engines rebuilt by Ken’s father Dennis before he retired. ‘The car had the wrong engine when I got it,’ says Harvey. ‘It was from a later Series III which is better, but it had a crack in the water jacket that we couldn’t plug and I wanted the right type. So we got one from a car that was doing the Pekingparis. It’s had all the usual – reground crank, new pistons.’

Amazingly, these engines, an otherwise unadventurous fourcylinder pushrod design, have connecting rods made from Hiduminium, a sophisticated nickel-aluminium light alloy. It was developed by Rolls-royce and High-duty Alloys Ltd for use in aircraft and later found in other applications such as bicycle cranks and brake calipers. ‘The gudgeon pins run directly in the alloy,’ says Ken, ‘and the pins we get now are two to three thousands of an inch oversize so we have to ream the pistons and little ends to suit. We have had a few parts remade, such as inlet manifolds to accept twin carburettors.

It runs the standard carburettor, whereas Ken has previously experimented with a twin carb set-up on his own Alpines. ‘Thing is,’ says Harvey, ‘even after some hard driving in the Alps, keeping up with each other, we’re within a couple of litres of each other when we fill up.’

‘It already had a floor change when we got it,’ confirms Harvey. ‘Probably using Hillman Hunter parts, judging by the gear knob.’

Interior

Originally the Alpine would’ve been part up holstered in vinyl with seats trimmed in leather on the wearing faces and the squab borders, front and rear crash rolls plus door rolls and armrest faces, and vinyl leather cloth used elsewhere. But Harvey wanted the cabin trimmed in full leather. The only thing was, the trimmer, who was presented with a bare car, had never worked on an Alpine before...

Paul Moores of Moores Coach Trimmers and Upholsterers explains, ‘We don’t work on cars made after 1997 unless they’re kit cars.’ He has since trimmed the works rally Alpines driven by Sheila van Damm and Stirling Moss (also restored by Ken), including their special bucket seats, but Harvey’s was the first Alpine he had worked on – and because all he had to work with was its stripped bodyshell he had not a scrap of trim to copy.

‘This was the first job I’d done for Ken, so I wanted to impress him because the trade is our bread and butter work. Ken brought me the seats first, and I built them up, and we had the car in later to do the carpets, over about a four-month period. He’d sandblasted the seat frames and it was a case of working up from ground zero using photographs as guidance, although we had the spring bases to go from. I’d done a couple of Sunbeam-talbot 90 saloons, so I had an idea of how the factory did them. As long as you’re sympathetic to the period style and think about what you’re doing, you get there in the end, though of course the main difference from original is that Harvey wanted leather rather than the original vinyl.

‘Oddly enough the dashboard crash roll is the most difficult part, because it’s covered in one piece of leather. I think the original covering got destroyed when it was taken off and I had to ask Ken, “Are you sure it’s in one piece?”

‘It’s a single piece stretched around and now I’ve done a few I’ve refined the technique a bit – it’s about knowing which direction to pull the grain. I initially roll it on rather than stretching it. A bit of heat helps take out the wrinkles; now I’ve got a steamer which is a wet heat, but then I was using a dry heat gun, and it’s very easy to scorch the leather. If you do that you throw it away and start again. Sometimes you have to pull it off and re-glue it, but the worst thing you can do is cut slits in the edges to try to help the leather around corners, because before you know it you’ve cut too far and you have to start again.

‘Adding up all the time spent on trimming Harvey’s car comes out to about six solid weeks of work.’

Life after rebirth

Since the car was finished Harvey hasn’t been afraid to use it – storming Alpine passes was what it was restored for and it’s testament to the quality of the work that it’s still in such good shape 10,000 miles later.

‘Considering it’s been up and down ravines it’s looking pretty good. We did 3500 miles last year including following the Mille Miglia, and the hood never goes up. It does get driven hard. Most of the instrumentation is dual-marked in imperial and metric units, so they were obviously meant for continental touring. And seat rake adjustment is rare on a Fifties car. The pedals adjust too – you undo the pinch bolts and you can move the pads in and out.

‘We’ve driven it back from Germany in one hit; another time it did 1000 miles in 18 hours. It’ll cruise at 75mph even without an overdrive, though it doesn’t accelerate very fast. It’s robust and heavily engineered, but you pay the price for that. It’s a tortoise and hare car.

‘Obviously this is ‘her’ car. I was offered a six-figure sum for it this year but I had to turn it down. Of all the cars I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot, this has given me the most pleasure and has taken us to the most far-flung places.’