Sunbeam Takes Owner Back To Younger Days

SHARON, CT – It’s hard to forget your first motorcycle. Alistair Jones was a lad living in Chichester, Sussex on the south coast of England when he bought his first bike – a 1952 Sunbeam S7 Deluxe. The year was 1970 and it cost him a mere five pounds. Jones only owned it for three months, riding it without a license, registration or insurance and getting stopped twice by the police. “I was 17 and couldn’t afford to keep it,” he said.

When he was 22, Jones quit riding after owning some other bygone British bikes, including a Francis-Barnett and a single-cylinder 600cc Panther. The Panther was a “sloper” – imagine the front half of V-twin motor and you’ll understand how the description came to be – which lore and Jones maintain “used to fire once every lamp post going down the street.”

The aren’t any lamp posts on the country road in Sharon where Jones has lived for the past 18 years, earning his living as a furniture maker, and there was no Panther parked in his driveway when I rode up on a Sunday morning a few years ago. However, there was a “mist green” 1954 Sunbeam S7 Deluxe resting on its side stand. That’s because in April 2007, some 37 years after abandoning his first love, Jones was reunited with a Sunbeam, enabling him to resume riding after a 32-year layoff.

“I like the design of them. The shape. They’re heavy. They’re a comfortable bike to ride,” he said. A Sunbeam is also an eye-catching conversation piece. While the Sunbeam name has appeared on many products over the years, how you perceive it may depend on your age. These days, Sunbeam is known for producing appliances. “They’re the same people who make the food mixers, the steam irons,” said Jones.

Back in the 1960s, Sunbeam was known for making two-seater Alpine and Tiger sports cars, the kind that secret agent Maxwell Smart drove up to the front of Control headquarters in on the TV comedy “Get Smart.”

Before that, Sunbeam made motorcycles, with its S7, S8 and S7 Deluxe models being built between 1946 and 1956. The Sunbeam brand had the reputation of being “a gentleman’s motorcycle.” “They’re still looking for the gentleman,” replied Jones when I asked if he qualified as such. “That’s the only part that didn’t come with the bike.”

Jones acquired the Sunbeam on his birthday. “I was 54 and the bike built was 1954,” he said. He amazingly located it right in Sharon, where previous owner Rob Butler had been storing it. Butler lives across the state border in Ancramdale, N.Y. and rides a 1973 BMW R75/5, and whom should Jones and I come across while out riding that morning than Butler, who provided some background on the Sunbeam.

Butler recalled that he purchased it in 1975 in London, where he lived between 1973 and 1977. “I had a friend who had it (and) was trying to sell it,” said Butler, recalling that it came with two spare engines. “He loved the Sunbeam and was happy that I loved it.”

When it was time to move back to the U.S., his plan was to sell the Sunbeam. He had a bunch of tools that he was sending home. When they didn’t meet the minimum weight requirement of the shipper, he decided to bring the bike, too. “They went air freight and beat me home by two days,” he recalled.

In the 32 years that Butler owned the Sunbeam, he only put 3,000-5,000 miles on it. “I’d ride it for six months to a year and something would go,” he said, explaining that his usual response would be to park the bike until he eventually got the urge again to make it roadworthy.

While not a particularly complicated bike – an inline, two-cylinder motor powering a shaft drive – it is British. “I always say Sunbeam was the British answer to BMW’s shaft drive and they didn’t get it right,” said Butler.

Jones vacillates when it comes to the Sunbeam’s dependability. “When they’re running, they’re very reliable,” he said, allowing as how on a recent ride to Kent the bike sputtered and he had to stop and clean a spark plug. Getting it running is the trick. Jones said the bike usually starts on the second kick, but he had to thrust the kick-starter at least a dozen times before the engine fired and we could head out on a ride.

“Why it wouldn’t start this morning, I have no idea,” he said. Riding the Sunbeam at night is also problematic because of its low-power headlamp. “You can’t go out after dark because you can’t see,” he said. What about the horn? Well, Jones said it’s “like squeezing a mouse.”

Jones put roughly 2,000 miles on the Sunbeam in his first 17 months ownership. In recent years, it has been seen on the road sporadically. When we met up with Butler, Jones urged him to take his former bike for a quick spin, which he did without hesitation, and it fired right up for him. “Until I got the BMW, I’d never ridden anything else. I used to think it rode beautifully. When I jumped on it, it felt heavy and clunky and the brakes didn’t work. They’re English brakes. It’s sort of dangerous compared to modern bikes.”

Nonetheless, Butler concluded, “It was a great bike.” And still is, and still in the hands of an owner who appreciates it.