The Sunbeam 3-litre is a sports car introduced by Sunbeam in October 1925The Motor Show IV, Sunbeam Cars. ''The Times'', Tuesday, Oct 13, 1925; pg. 8; Issue 44091 at the

London Motor Show London Motor Show, formerly the London Motorfair, is a motor show in England. It was held biannually at Earls Court Exhibition Centre, from 1977 to 1999. When the event won the support of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and P&O ...

, and was offered from 1926 until 1930. It was seen at the time and subsequently as the retort of Louis Hervé Coatalen, Sunbeam's energetic chief engineer, to the

Bentley 3 Litre The Bentley 3 Litre was a car chassis manufactured by Bentley. The company's first, it was developed from 1919 and made available to customers' coachbuilders from 1921 to 1929. The Bentley was very much larger than the 1368 cc Bugattis that d ...

which by then was beginning to make its mark, having won at Le Mans earlier that year. The Sunbeam's engine was of 2,920 cc, distributed between six cylinders. It featured inclined valves operated via easily adjustable tappet levers by two overhead camshafts, an important innovation at the time. The detailed design of the engine followed many of the principles of the engines which were gathering plaudits for the company on European racing circuits. The cylinder head and block were formed from a single casting which was then considered normal for high-performance engines. One of the novel features of the engine was its use of

dry-sump lubrication A dry-sump system is a method to manage the lubricating motor oil in four-stroke and large two-stroke piston driven internal combustion engines. The dry-sump system uses two or more oil pumps and a separate oil reservoir, as opposed to a co ...

whereby engine oil was drawn from a tank positioned beside the engine. In 1929 a supercharger was added, increasing the power output to 135bhp. The cylinder bores translated into a fiscal horse-power rating of 20.9 hp which under the system operating in the 1920s attracted an annual Road Fund Tax of £21. The big four-cylinder engines of the competitor vehicles from Bentley incurred an annual Road Fund Tax of £16. The difference of £5 might be considered immaterial for anyone who could afford to purchase and run a car of this type, but £5 was at the time more than the average weekly wage in Britain, so the annual saving to the Bentley buyer may well have been significant even in this class. The Bentley gained a reputation as the more robust of the two cars, although in standard form the Sunbeam was reported to be marginally quicker. Two Sunbeams were entered in the 1925 Le Mans, one driven by

Henry Segrave Sir Henry O'Neal de Hane Segrave (22 September 1896 – 13 June 1930) was an early British pioneer in land speed and water speed records. Segrave, who set three land and one water record, was the first person to hold both titles simultaneous ...

and

George Duller George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd Presiden ...

, the other by

Jean Chassagne Jean Chassagne (26 July 1881, in La Croisille-sur-Briance – 13 April 1947) was a pioneer submariner, aviator and French racecar driver active 1906-1930. Chassagne finished third in the 1913 French Grand Prix; won the 1922 Tourist Trophy and fi ...

and Sammy Davis. Segrave and Duller were forced to retire but Chassagne and Davis achieved second place, beaten only by the Lorraine-Dietrich of Rossignol and de Courcelles. In retrospect the Sunbeam's achievement became eclipsed by the extent to which the race came to be dominated by Bentleys during the second half of the decade. Although the sturdily constructed chassis was based on that from earlier Sunbeams, the hitherto characteristic semi-elliptical leaf springs were, at the back, replaced by cantilever rear springs which during the second half of the decade became a Sunbeam hallmark.

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{{commonscat-inline, Sunbeam 3 litre super sports tc 3-litre Cars introduced in 1925