Nigel Matthews has kindly submitted some wonderful background info on the 1962 Sunbeam Harrington Le Mans shown above. The lovely sports hatchback has just come up for sale in Vancouver, BC. It appeared in that city's All British Field Meet a couple of years ago (where I saw and admired the car) and was featured in the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia's annual calendar. Nigel is manager of ICBC's specialty vehicles department as well as being a widely-respected concours judge. Rest assured he is not a name-dropper, so you can forgive him for mentioning this delicious bit of history:

His mother is a good friend of Lady Marion Rootes and Nigel is also an acquaintance of Christine Harrington, daughter of Thomas Harrington, who built these variations on the Sunbeam Alpine. To put that in perspective for our younger viewers who may not be familiar with the name, the Rootes organisation was at one time a vast car-building conglomerate, responsible for Hillman, Humber, Sunbeam and perhaps some badge-engineered marques I've forgotten. Sadly, in the 1960s, Rootes was bought by Chrysler -the kiss of death for any foreign make. That Detroit giant eventually killed Rootes just as it destroyed France's Simca. (While we're dropping names, I may as well mention that I was a driver for the Rootes factory team in the Canadian Winter Rally, in its day the toughest rally in North America.)

Nigel mentions that Lady Rootes painted a picture of him when he was four years old, which now hangs in his Richmond, BC, bedroom and is, of course, a keepsake. As for Christine Harrington, she had no idea her father had constructed these lovely cars until Nigel sent her a copy of the ICBC calendar. She also didn't realise that cousin Clive Harrington sold the ex-factory 1961 Le Mans car (where the model name came from) for £48,000 at Bonham's Goodwood auction in 2005! Harrington's primary business was the building of coaches -they were also Rootes dealers with showrooms in the south of England. Nigel plans on learning whether she or the Harrington Museum has any interest in the car.