Sunbeam Style over Substance

Grace Kelly reached into her picnic basket and asked Cary Grant, innocently enough, “Do you want a leg or a breast?”

by Gary Anderson

Before the 1960s Sunbeam Alpine that we all remember as the basis for the Tiger, there was another Alpine, made from 1953 to 1955.

For my money, the stories attached to this seldom-seen model (of approximately 3,000 built, only 200 may now survive) are more interesting than those about the later model. I’d argue that had there not been a Sunbeam Alpine in the ’50s, Rootes probably wouldn’t have introduced a new sports car in the ’60s.

But then, I was deeply influenced as a boy by Grace Kelly smiling at Cary Grant from the front seat of a sapphire blue Alpine as she reached into her picnic basket and asked him, innocently, “Do you want a leg or a breast?”

In 1953, we are way ahead of where the story starts. Sunbeams date back to 1887, when John Marston, an avid racing cyclist, started the Sunbeamland Cycle Factory. By 1909, the company was producing a line of Sunbeam automobiles, with Marston racing them to gain publicity.

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