Sunbeam, a British car company, started production of sports cars in 1953 by introducing a two-seater Sunbeam Alpine. The model was a successor of Sunbeam Talbot 90 and had a straight-4 engine; with 80 hp the car top speed reached 120 miles/h (170 km/h).
ZIL-111В is a Soviet premium-class vehicle with a “long-base sedan”, “limousine” and “phaeton” body, which was assembled at the Likhachev Factory in Moscow as a limited edition in 1959-1967. The car was used on exceptional and special occasions – for parades, festive escorts and other ceremonial events. This convertible “inspected” the Soviet Union parades regularly held in May and October in Moscow in the first half of the 1960s.
The postage stamps depict the ZIL-111В which brought Yury Gagarin, the first cosmonaut, to the Kremlin on 14 April 1961, and the Sunbeam Alpine which was driven by Grace Kelly in “To Catch a Thief” (1955).
There is an illustrated cover which has two postage stamps with a FDC cancelled in the Russian Federation, and two postage stamps and a FDC cancelled in the Principality of Monaco.
Design: S. Ulyanovskiy.
Face value: 15 rub. for each stamp.
Size of stamp: 37х37 mm, size of sheet: 131х131 mm.
Form of issue: a sheet of 8 (3х3) stamps with illustrated margins and a coupon
Circulation: 240 thousand copies of each stamp (60 thousand sheets).
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