1967 Sunbeam Minx

Description

If you're one of those guys who is into urban farming, recreational mustache growing, or brewing your own kinds of cider, maybe this 1967 Sunbeam Minx is your car. It's quirky, fun, and definitely unique, and in true British fashion, it's also a lot of fun to drive.

I don't know who was doing the styling in England in the '60s, but it's definitely funky. This purposeful little Minx could have been a boring box on wheels, but instead someone injected it with some style, ranging from the peaked fenders and character line slashing across the sides to the last vestiges of tail fins out back. Who says all sedans have to be boring? The two-tone color combination is very traditional and you can easily imagine this car purring around in the background of your favorite period BBC TV show. For an English car of this vintage, fit and finish are decent, and while it's definitely got its share of battle scars, somehow that makes it even more endearing. It's like it drove right out of the '60 and into your driveway, skipping the restoration and resto-mod phases altogether. There's not a lot of trim, but the bumpers are tucked in tight to the body, the grille is in decent shape, and the shape of the taillights is echoed in the rear bumper guards. People are going to love this car, not because it's perfect but because it's not!

The cheerful light blue vinyl interior is the kind of basic practicality we haven't seen in the United States in a long time. Nevertheless, it manages to be sporting and comfortable at the same time, with bucket seats up front, a proper 4-speed manual gearbox on the floor, and a big steering wheel that makes it very easy to wheel it around town. The seat covers are surely recently additions to the roster and the door panels were probably done at the same time, because all four match and look good. A simple instrument pod with speed, fuel, and temperature gauges is just about all you get, because this one is all about minimalism. There's no radio, no A/C, no real options of any kind, but that really doesn't matter because it's all part of the charm. There's reasonable space in the back seat, even for real-sized people, and the trunk, excuse me, the BOOT offers a factory jack and a spare tire.

The 1496cc inline-4 engine is a gutsy little powerplant in the best British fashion. Like its more sporting cousins, it's got a fat torque curve that makes the most of its modest displacement and it's very thrifty, which is important in a country where petrol costs $7 bucks a gallon. It's quite stock under the hood, with a neat miniature air cleaner on the carburetor, a big heater box on the firewall, and a surprisingly big radiator up front to keep it cool. The 4-speed shifts cleanly and it goes down the road quite well, suggesting that someone appreciated the simple things in life. There's a newer muffler underneath, giving it that familiar baritone burble that British 4-cylinders offer, and the suspension should look familiar to anyone who has been under a GM car of the '40s, which Sunbeam seems to have shamelessly stolen. Drum brakes are more than adequate for something so light, as are the diminutive 135/60/13 whitewall tires on simple steel wheels.

It's affordable, it's quirky, and it's economical. While all the other hipsters are driving vintage Beetles, why not try something a little off the beaten path? Call today!