1949 passed and Cosgrove and Coronado Motorworks continued to churn out 278 Sunrises. Hardtops, convertibles...but where was the rumored "Super Sunrise" as some had called it? January, February, March...April... Months passed, and still no word of it. It would seem that a big lie had been told.
Demand for the 278 Sunrise still exceeded supply, although Victor Coronado issued a public statement saying that a larger production facility was in the works. When asked about the Super Sunrise, Coronado replied "Well, there are plans to overhaul the Sunrise chassis, but that's a few years down the pipeline at the earliest." Later in the month an interviewer threw a similar question at Cosgrove who replied
"We have a new Sunrise chassis in its infancy at the moment. Me and the boys have put together a very rough idea of what the 50s Sunrise is going to be, although we are going to sit back, observe, and think before we really get that project rolling. The CA chassis, as we call it back at the factory, is starting to age a bit in my opinion, but I figure we can get a few more years out of it at the very least before it needs a makeover. There have been some interesting developments in engine tech, too. I've been tinkering with some new things. We've been putting a lot of time and money into R&D lately. A whole lot. So much time and money that actually, there may be a delay in us getting a new facility set up, but it will be worth it in the long run. Once we bring the Sunrise up to date I can guarantee you we will expand our facilities, but until then we need to develop a car that's going to keep C&C afloat. Last thing we need is to be doing is banking on an ancient car to pull through for us and give us the money we need to stay afloat and innovate. A bigger facility isn't going to do us any good if it's cranking out cars nobody wants."
From that point on most fans of C&C-M who still believed in the Super Sunrise rumor assumed the car Cosgrove allegedly showed Victor's friend was a next gen 278 Sunrise prototype. Summer was coming to an end and followers of the brand continued to speculate, and then big news struck. Victor Coronado, Gregory Cosgrove, and a team of C&C-M employees were spotted at the Nurburgring. Apparently they had brought 3 cars to the track, both the familiar hardtop and convertible variant of the 278 Sunrise, and a never before seen, chromed to the gills Sunrise hardtop. A local car magazine managed to catch up with the C&C-M team as they were loading back up to head home. When asked about the new hardtop, Cosgrove replied
"Yes, it's THAT car. The rumors are true. At this rate she'll be out on the roads in '51; although, who's to say we won't delay its release again? I handed it over to Victor and he polished the looks a bit, but the engine is the same as it was a year ago. We've been working with the brakes, the suspension, we tried out some new tires, we slapped a new gearbox on it. We've been using it as our guinea pig for a while now. Got some good R&D out of the thing. We may put together a race car based on this thing. We had a pretty crazy set up on this baby at one point, but I wasn't quite happy with it as a road car. It was VERY fast, though. Definitely excited about racing a similar build; although, I don't know if we have room in our budget for that quite yet. We're pretty happy with this build that we brought to the track. I'm fairly confident this is what we will ship out onto the road next year. I can't say for sure we won't delay it again, but I feel we don't have much left to squeeze out of this car at the moment without getting too crazy for our budget and our customers. I don't want to put something out there that is going to cause people to get themselves killed."
The German magazine and C&C-M made an agreement that limited information would be released to the public in exchange for the magazine getting an additional, more detailed, early look at the car later in the year.
An excerpt from an article released by a British car mag covering these developments states
"...so far only one photo of the new Sunrise has been released to the public, a side shot. It may be a rather gorgeous side shot, but we will just have to wait until more photos come out of the wood work, or maybe even release day, to confirm rumors such as the absence of the hood scoop described in the original Super Sunrise rumor, front turning signals (rear turn signals can be observed in the publicly released photo, so I'm thinking this is quite likely) coupled with small chrome accents, and apparently a big "COSGROVE" label on the trunk of the car..."
Later in the same article, the British mag printed track times rumored to have been set by the C&C-M cars that day. The convertible clocked in at 10:40.91 around the 'ring, the hardtop bested the verts time with a 10:19.98, and the new Sunrise was reported to have posted a 10:01.51. The hardtop 278 Sunrise was certainly a quick car, but many found the 10:01.51 posted by the Super Sunrise to be quite difficult to believe. People doubted such a small company was capable of claiming the fastest production car throne. Folks eargely waited until its release to find out whether C&C-M really had managed to create such a speed demon.
(I know these times are about on par with a modern Ford Transit
, but from the research I've done these are pretty fast for the time. In '51 Formula 1 would visit the ring and the fastest lap was a 9:55.8. Formula 1, from what I've seen, wasn't as far away from normal race cars and street cars as they are today. The series had just been born and F1 cars of the time ran swing axles in the rear and downforce wasn't a big thing during that time, so the proximity to an F1 car's performance isn't as crazy as it would be today, but I'd say it's still pretty respectable).