An absolutely superb and rare photo of the Sunbeam photographed with Henry Segrave at Daytona Beach in 1929 after his Golden Arrow set the new land speed record.

Sunbeam was the only British make to win a Grand Prix in the first half of the 20th century. Many of the features taken for granted on modern cars were first developed and tested by Sunbeam on the race track and then introduced to their ordinary touring cars. Among features pioneered by Sunbeam were overhead valve engines, brakes on all four wheels, power assisted brakes and twin overhead camshaft engines. Twin cam engines were standard on the 3 litre Super Sports models from 1924.

On August 13, 1920, Sunbeam merged with the French company Automobiles Darracq S.A.. Alexandre Darracq built his first car in 1896, and his cars were so successful that Alfa Romeo and Opel both started out in the car industry by building Darracqs under licence. In 1919 Darracq bought the London-based firm of Clement-Talbot to become Talbot-Darracq in order to import Talbots into England. Adding Sunbeam created "Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq," or "STD Motors". In addition to quality limousine, saloon and touring cars, Coatalen was pleased to build racing cars for Henry Segrave – who won the French and Spanish GPs in 1923/4, see photo!!! He also built a Brooklands racer for K L Guinness – based on a V12 27 litre 350 hp Sunbeam Manitou engine, originally designed to power the R34 airship. This famous car (Sunbeam 350HP) established a new Land Speed Record at Brooklands and in Malcolm Campbell’s hands at Pendine Sands where it achieved 150.766 mph (242.634 km/h) in 1925 after renaming it the Blue Bird and painting it blue. The same year Coatalen’s new 3 litre Super Sports came 2nd at Le Mans – beating Bentley – this was the first production twin cam car in the world. In 1926 Segrave captured the LSR in a new 4 litre V12 Sunbeam racer originally named Ladybird and later renamed Tiger. Coatalen decided to re-enter the LSR field himself, building the truly gigantic Sunbeam 1000HP powered by two 450 hp Matabele engines. On 29 March 1927 the car captured the speed record at 203.792 mph (327.971 km/h).

Sunbeam's great age was really the 1920s under Coatalen’s leadership with very well engineered, high quality, reliable cars — and a great reputation on the track. A later land speed record attempt, the 1930 Silver Bullet, failed to achieve either records, or the hoped-for advances in aero engines. It is now almost forgotten. Sunbeam did not really survive the depression and in 1935 went into receivership and were sold to Lord Rootes. The last true Sunbeam was made in 1935. The new entry model “Dawn” was a typical mid 1930’s design with independent front suspension whereas other models, the 18.2HP and Speed 20 were based on Vintage designs and qualify as PVT under VSCC rules.

This is a very nice and very rare non period photo that reflects a wonderful era of Sunbeam ‘s automotive history in a wonderful way.  This is your rare chance to own this photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format of ca. 8" x 12" (ca. 20 cm x 30 cm).  It makes it perfectly suitable for framing.