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Editor's note: This is part of a series at KSL.com featuring some of Utah's coolest cars. If you own a customized vehicle — from sports cars to semitrucks — email jormond@deseretdigital.com with a photo of the vehicle and a brief description for consideration.SALT LAKE CITY — Josh Underhill knows his way around building custom Jeeps, but not putting Corvette engines in tiny British sports cars. Maybe that’s why he took this five-year project on.
His brother John, in Arizona, wanted a 1965 Sunbeam Alpine built for his wife, Julie. It had to have room for groceries, a 44-ounce cup from Sonic Drive-In, and be able to follow around John’s 1968 Camaro.
The Sunbeam Alpine was a two-seater convertible built in England in the 1950s and 1960s with a small four-cylinder engine. In 1964, Carroll Shelby helped cram a Ford V-8 engine into it, and the Sunbeam Tiger was born.
While the path to a V-8 in the car had already been paved, Underhill didn’t follow it. Instead, he found a 2002 LS1 Corvette engine and 4L60-E automatic transmission for the car and cut the firewall and floors to make it fit. The engine hooks up to a custom 9-inch Ford rear end with wide tires in back, the trunk cut up to make room for them.
Salt Lake City fabricator Mark Lockhart built the panels back, adding a 15-gallon fuel cell in the trunk and relocating the air bag suspension equipment into the rear quarter panels. The grocery space was secure.
Underhill had a frustrating time with the hired-out custom interior, missing Autorama in 2018 and 2019 because the promised work wasn’t ready to go, but the Sonic Cup criterion was met.
Can it keep up with John’s 1968 Camaro? If you want to make Josh smile, ask him if the Alpine is fast. He estimates it has about 400 horsepower and says you can steer it with the gas pedal.
The Alpine is back with its owner, Julie, in Arizona for now. It may put in an appearance at Autorama next year, though it was built as a Sonic-drink and grocery-getting daily driver, not a show car.
Josh said he liked the challenge of building something so foreign to him — he had never heard of an Alpine before his brother-in-law asked him to do the project) — and is looking forward to more unfamiliar-territory builds in the future. Next up is 1957 Volkswagen Beetle electric conversion, something he knows little about — for now.
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