The Sunbeam-Talbot: more than the sum of its parts?

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Many enthusiasts look upon 1935 as an annus horribilis for Sunbeam and Talbot. It was the year they were sucked up into the hungry Rootes empire, with its policy of minimising costs and maximising profits, whereas Sunbeam and Talbot had always built cars to the best of their ability. Soon, the inevitable happened – combined into the single Sunbeam-Talbot marque, they now found themselves sharing parts with lowly Hillmans and stodgy Humbers, their Rootes stablemates.

While the Hillmans and Humbers served their markets well, the STD group’s discerning customers were not fooled by badge-engineering. The Sunbeam-Talbot Three Litre was essentially a Humber Snipe which demanded an additional £50 for such luxuries as dual-tone horns, triple ashtrays and metallic paints. Fancy bodies were offered, but for an even greater cost. The massive Four Litre was Super Snipe-based, with its 4085cc, 26.8hp Super Six, and was offered with more stylised coachwork by Thrupp & Maberly, another Rootes acquisition.

Predictably, few were built before the outbreak of war caused them to be sold off cheap – 229 in total, of which just 44 were the £658 Thrupp & Maberly Touring Saloon, like this 1939 example. It’s an exceptional survivor, which was in the same family until 1952 and has been again since 1970. The Sunbeam-Talbot badging may only be a masquerade, but Martin Buckley finds much to praise in this solid and stately example of pre-war luxury. Read all about it in the November issue of The Automobile, available now.

Photographs by Jim Holden, Words by Zack Stiling

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