This handsome Sunbeam S8 was a pleasure to look at and to ride - and when it broke down on a test, the owner could fix it at the roadside. That's practical.
Andrew Chapman is a tall, calm, good-humored man. At his workshop outside Farnham, Foxwood Motorcycle R & R, he fettles, repairs and restores postwar Sunbeam S7/S8s, as well as Ariel singles and twins. As a one-man-band, I imagine the calmness comes in handy. With an engineering background that began with his work as an aerodynamic designer with Hawker Aircraft, he's been running Foxwood for five-and-a-half years.
One of his clients is long-distance, high-mileage Ariel rider Steve Carter, whose FH 650 'Black Fly' featured in TCM, February 2019. And five years ago it was Steve who sold Andrew this black 1952 S8, which was in bits at the time. "I just said `I'll have it," Andrew recalled. "I knew nothing about Sunbeams, but I wanted another classic to go with my Ariel VH 500cc single."
His pal Steve laughed: "It was a heap of rubbish so I sold it to a friend!" The S8, for which Andrew retains the buff log book, had first been registered in Hampshire, where its ownership had gone back and forth between two brothers. "The engine was well-worn: said Andrew, "so I've stripped it often, to fix minor problems. The motor is due for a complete rebuild, but I don't want to restore the machine as a whole and make it too good to use, as I ride it quite a lot."
So with Steve in attendance, as we set off into the local lanes for our test, I thought about the postwar Sunbeams.
The Sunbeam also rises
This story is from the December 2019 edition of The Classic MotorCycle.
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This story is from the December 2019 edition of The Classic MotorCycle.
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