Morning Symphony: Drifting A Talbot Lotus Sunbeam, Chrysler’s Last Gasp In Europe


Morning Symphony: Drifting A Talbot Lotus Sunbeam, Chrysler’s Last Gasp In Europe

What does a Talbot hatchback have to do with Chrysler? It goes like this: Starting in the late 1950s, Chrysler started buying interests in European auto manufacturers, emulating the successes that General Motors saw with their Vauxhall and Opel brands. By 1976, names like Sunbeam, Hillman, and Humber, which had fallen under the Rootes Group that Chrysler had outright taken over, were gone and Europe was getting Chrysler-branded products. And around 1978, Chrysler Europe decided that they needed to go rally racing, so they contracted a deal with Lotus for development of a rally machine based upon the Sunbeam 1.6 GLS. The stock drivetrain came out and a Lotus-developed 2.2L four-banger went in, backed up with a ZF-sourced four-speed manual trans. Suspensions were tweaked, weight was shed, and what came out was a wicked little rear-drive hot hatch that used 150 horsepower to move one ton of car. Or, in tweaked form, up to 250 horsepower.

It might look like a slightly shrunken Dodge Omni of sorts, but make no mistake, the snotty growl you’re hearing from this hatchback is to be taken very, very seriously. Light, nimble, and tossable, the Sunbeam Lotus is a track weapon from the beginning of the 1980s that looks like a hell of a lot of fun. It’s track record is proven…Talbot used them to take home the World Rally Championship Manufacturer’s Trophy for 1981.


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3 thoughts on “Morning Symphony: Drifting A Talbot Lotus Sunbeam, Chrysler’s Last Gasp In Europe

  1. Chevy Hatin' Mad Geordie

    A good mate of mine had one of these – but unfortunately it was cursed. On his first outing with it he cut up some gangster types at the traffic lights and they got out of their car armed with baseball bats intent on smashing him and the car up. He used the power of that Lotus engine to escape, but the next day he got done for speeding. So he made his young apprentice his emergency driver, only for him to crash it into a lamp post. Safe to say he cut his losses and sold it for a handsome profit. A mint stock Sunbeam Lotus’s price is on an upward spiral at the moment and ex-works rally cars and now worth £100,000 plus – but only if they are not cursed!

  2. Matt Cramer

    There’s a good reason it looks like a Dodge Omni – the Omni / Horizon was originally a Chrysler Europe design and had the same team working on it.

  3. Alex Maclaurin

    In 1982 I was in England for a Sunbeam Tiger event where we toured the Old Rootes Plant and two of the World Rally winning cars were there with their crews. They gave us a live demo of replacing the front suspension as if it were a full on pit stop. It was very impressive. Alex

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