The International Sunbeam Harrington Association Website - Members Features

THE PROMOTIONAL LRX HLM

by Jerry Logan

The First LRX Promotional car was the red one shown in many articles. B9104381.

A while ago Jerry Logan was wondering about the first Harrington Le Mans (HLM) cars arriving to the USA. He had noticed that some of the early imports were in the same group of HLMs which made it to North America in late 1961. When he studied the paint codes he came up with an idea that those demo/promotional imports were painted red, white and blue!

Jerry owns the white one, the blue one could be the one which was burned/destroyed in a fire then while owned by Stephen Morris (no pic). But where was the "red" one? I'm pretty sure that the red one is the HLM featured in R&T and Sports car Graphic. That car is carrying the number plate DLR 2930. DLR stands for "Dealer" and is used by an automotive dealership

Here comes the interesting part. Ken Miles is known for being a race car driver but, he was also associated with the West Coast Rootes Group Dealership located in Los Angles (LA), California. The DLR 2930 plate was used on the Ken Miles prototype Tiger. The same DLR plate as the demo/promotional red Harrington Le Mans appearing on the cover of Sports Car Graphic. Connecting the dots strongly suggests that the Los Angles Rootes Group dealership had the "red" USA demo/promotional car.

A while ago I was corresponding with John Barley from New Zealand (NZ) about his HLM. During restoration Barley had found an interior panel with "show car" written on its back side and a document under the front seat saying "Hollywood Jan 1962". Barley also stated that his HLM was code 39 and had been converted to RHD from LHD when it was imported to NZ from the USA's West Coast. The paint code 39 was new information for the HLM registry as it was noted from the old HLM registry to be code 19. I put two and two together and it became four. Had we found the missing "red" demo/promotional HLM?

As the cream on the top there were one more early car imported to North America but to Canada. It's also listed in our register as a red one, ex-owner was norm Mort the motor writer and a good friend. He was missing some parts for his car and asked me for help. I told him about Stephen Morris' leftovers after the fire, the engine, wheels and some other stuff. Norm bought all this nut unfortunately he couldn't restore the car, took too much time from his writing so the car was up for sale. The new owner with the remains of those two cars is Reg Hahn, OI and the Canadian one is undergoing full restoration with help from the blue one. Then there is one more early LRX from the same group of cars, Jerry's guess is that it is the EU demo car?? The one in Geneva show in March -62 is maybe not 19 but 39, hard to tell from a B/W picture. The LRX cars are talking about are. 6874, 6893, 7465, 7466 and 8257 all left Rootes for H.Ltd in July and Aug 1961. Four months later they showed up in North America.