An add-on air conditioner was initially offered as an option on the 1959 Series III Hillman Minx and teh Series II Rapier. They were available through about 1963 that I know of (and possibly later). Installed price was about $300 back in 1959 (a lot of money when compared to a $1,900 car!). Since the Minx/Rapier used the same engine as the Alpine (essentially), all of the mounting hardware should work. The only problem was that the Minx/Rapier unit was mounted in the trunk and blew in from the rear deck. Possibly a redesign or a later model was totally under the dash. Or maybe the Series IV was a GT model with the unit mounted in unused convertible top well. I do have a Rootes sales brochure for the air conditioner, a Hillman ad for an air conditioned Minx and a road test of an air conditioned Minx.
Jan
Ian Spencer <ian(at)sunbeamalpine.org> wrote:
> Has anyone (Ed) ever seen the Coolaire air conditioning unit made forthe Sunbeam Alpine in the early '60's. This unit hangs from the dash
similar to the factory radio assembly and really has a factory look to
it. Very "cool" if you ask me. :-)
The reason I ask is because I just acquired one of these units this
weekend. It is complete with the installation manual and shows it
installed in a Series IV Automatic!
I scanned a picture from the install manual that shows what this thing
looks like. You can find it at
http://www.sunbeamalpine.org/air/air_cond.jpg I'm vey excited to have
stumbled across this little gem nd I'm interested to learn more about
it. - Ian
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 08:19:47 CDT
