1932 Sunbeam 24hp

1932 Sunbeam Tourer

Vanden Plas Replica

3. 2 Litre - 6 Cylinder

4 speed ( not 3 speed )

Chassis 7031R

Engine Number 28216 -

NOTES FROM PAT CLOUGH AND RON HOLLIS

A few notes about the history of the 1932 Sunbeam, as told by Pat and Ron.

The rebuild of this car started In Pietermaritzburg in the 1970s. It was found on a farm in Natal, the original 4-door sedan body having been scrapped, and the rolling chassis made in to a flat-bed truck during WW2.

It was decided at the time to rebuild the car as a roadster based on the 1928 Van Den Plas Bentley.

The rear section of the body was manufactured in sheet metal on a rectangular tube frame using blueprints from a Van den Plas Bentley open tourer body. Pat made the doors himself using a marine ply frame, skinned with 1mm hand shaped aluminium. The top section of the bonnet is from the original car. Pat had louvres punched in to two sheets of aluminium and trimmed them to size to complete the bonnet. The radiator and grill was donated by a motor cycle restorer who had it hanging on the wall in his man cave, but didn’t know where it had come from. Pat also decided that the car would look better with side-mounted spare wheels and after raiding the Natal branch of the VVC for spares, he found and adapted some suitable wheel mount brackets and had the front wings modified to accept the wheels. He coincidentally also came across the two spare wheel-mounted rear view mirrors and purchased them on the spot from a Car magazine advertisement.

Pat received all the parts to make the car with no dashboard or instruments. The previous owner, who was putting everything together to build a very interesting car, had the headlamps completely restored including re silvering the reflectors and also decided to have all the instruments restored by the same Sunbeam specialist in Devon England. On a business trip to the UK he took all the instruments with him intending to drive down to Devon. His business in London tied him up for too long so he decided to pack the instruments very carefully and post them to Devon from London. This was at a time when the “troubles” were on between Ireland and England . The clock in the parcel started ticking in the Post Office, the bomb squad was called and the parcel was blown up. A further visit to VVC Natal’s spares store yielded some period-correct instruments as replacements for the originals.

Many years later the car arrived at Norman Frost’s classic car sales outlet (Frost brothers) in Knysna and was sold to a gentleman in Oudtshoorn who used it as a courtesy car for his upmarket B & B establishment. On his passing, the car was re-acquired by Norman, in 50/ 50 partnership with Ron Hollis.

Since it hadn’t been completely finished since its Natal rebuild days, some additional items were added to the car at this stage, under Pat Cough’s experienced guidance. A hood frame from another vintage car was adapted to fit and a folding soft-top added, with an oval rear window. A local craftsman, Ray Mackey, constructed the rear-mounted luggage trunk to finish-off the rear end of the car. Various known mechanical issues were dealt with by Bodge Engineering (Ron’s workshop) – notably engine bore re-sleeving, water pump repairs, renewed core plugs in the engine block and the conversion of the “Auto-Vac” unit to a disguised SU pump-and-float fuel feed to the carburettor.