With provenance dating back to 1901, the Sunbeam motor company has a long association with automobiles, motorcycles, racing, and aviation. Here we’re only focusing on a small but significant part of the Sunbeam story starting in the late ‘50s until their demise a decade later. Starting with the pretty, pillarless Rapier hardtop, these original print advertisements cover the iconic Alpine two-seat convertible and it’s big brother, the Ford V8 powered Tiger.

By the late 1960s Sunbeam was under the Rootes group of companies, which itself was bought out by Chrysler. Unwilling to sell a Ford-powered car under it’s umbrella, Chrysler killed off the Tiger when it proved too expensive to convert to small block Chrysler power. And with that one of the great British sports cars of the 1960s was no more. Often called the poor man’s Cobra, the Tiger was made famous throughout the world as Agent 86 Maxwell Smart’s car in the hugely popular 1960s TV series Get Smart.