IN summer 1977 a gallon of five star petrol cost 79p – but not for long with inflation running at 15.8 per cent and interest rates of seven per cent.

In America, the first Apple II computer went on sale, NASA’s exciting new Space Shuttle made its first flight (albeit strapped to the back of a Boeing 747) and the voyager deep space probes were launched.

Closer to home, France carried out the last execution using a guillotine and Opium perfume was a best-seller among chic Parisians.

Hollywood was confounded when the year’s biggest movie – Saturday Night Fever – was soundly beaten by a modest budget sci-fi flick called Star Wars (this was decades before all that Episode IV: A New Hope nonsense).

And in Britain Chrysler unveiled the car it hoped would revive its moribund fortunes.

Dubbed ‘the salvation of Chrysler’ by The Northern Echo in July 1977, the Sunbeam was a three-door hatchback designed to hit back against the Ford/VW duopoly that dominated the European market.

The smallest of the American ‘Big Three’, Chrysler had snapped up the remains of the Rootes empire in Britain and Simca in France to build a bold new European arm. Chrysler bosses aimed for 12-and-a-half per cent of the UK market – a wildly ambitious target, especially in a Europe where capacity was 2.5-times actual output.

“The Sunbeam [arrives] as the rays of better fortune are appearing over Coventry and Linwood,” reported The Echo. “Two shifts are now working at Linwood, near Glasgow, and there will be more work at the Coventry plant with a build-up of engine manufacture for the Sunbeam.”

Industrial relations at Linwood, the car factory built to produce the Hillman Imp, were not good. Chrysler had been at loggerheads with the work force over layoffs and a proposed reduction in the track speed from 45 to 33 cars an hour – plans unions feared were the beginning of a move to rundown the factory.

When Chrysler threatened to shut down its UK factories (prompting a workforce sit-in and calls for the plant to be nationalised) the British government stumped up £35m to help Chrysler build the Sunbeam in Britain.

“Chrysler refuse to put a figure on the [Sunbeam’s] development costs,” reported the Echo, “but industry sources suggest it might be around £50-70m”, in which case the Government had funded the lion’s share of the work.

Costs were kept down by using the floor pan from an Avenger and a modified version of the fascia already fitted to the Alpine model. It also used hand-me-down engines (the 1.3 and 1.6 from the Avenger and the troublesome 930cc from the Imp). And the rear tailgate was made entirely from glass with an aluminium edge moulding. The decision to base it on the Avenger meant the Sunbeam was rear wheel drive at a time when the market was moving to front drivers like the Polo and the Fiesta (although the Sunbeam’s major domestic rival, the Ford Escort, was still rear wheel drive by 1977 Ford was working on a FWD replacement).

The glass tailgate forced Chrysler to use a high sill to strengthen the chassis – which meant loading heavy items was a chore.

Nevertheless, Chrysler pressed on launching the Sunbeam with an ad campaign featuring Petula Clark singing a specially-written song (why else would she warble “... put a Chrysler Sunbeam in your life”?) In 1978, The Northern Echo’s road test reported that the Imp engine was “a little slow to get pff choke on a cold morning” but praised the performance and the crisp gearchange.

Damning with faint praise, it went on: “The seats are fairly comfortably shaped and I liked the tartan upholstery. Instrumentation is nominal but sufficient and the heater can generally be adjusted to suit most needs.”

Sadly our tester’s assertion that the Sunbeam would ‘restore Chrysler’s fortunes in Britain’ proved rather wide of the mark. Six months later the Americans bailed out, selling its British operations to Peugeot which immediately signalled the end of Linwood. The Sunbeam soldiered on until 1981 – and Peugeot even gamely put the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus into limited production to give the range a sporty halo model - but the game was up long before.