Austin-Healey Sprite

You could say that the car was as cute as a bug’s ear, but its bug-eyes gave it the indelible icon that has stayed with us for nearly 50 years. The Austin-Healey Sprite wasn’t the first car that Donald Mitchell Healey built, nor was it the best, but, due to its appealingly affordable price and its so-cute-you-want-to-cuddle-it visage, the Sprite is the Healey car that has the most universal charm.

Indifferent spirit

Healey’s saga was already moving into its third act when the Sprite was presented in 1958. DMH, as he liked to be called, was born in 1898 in Perranporth, Cornwall, the son of a shopkeeper who finally became a land developer. Like Herbert Austin and Henry Royce  before him, the young Healey became enamored of tools, machinery and the most infant industry of the day, aviation. He left school to join Sopwith and within months, the outbreak of World War I encouraged Healey to enlist in the Royal Flying Corps.  Immediately, he shifted from mechanic to aviator, but his short flying career ended when he crashed in 1916. Mustered out of the service soon after, he returned home to Cornwall where he involved himself in two other fledgling industries: automobiles and radios.

After designing a successful radio receiver, his curiosity in automobiles won out, and with his father’s help he opened a garage. By the mid-Twenties,  his budding business interests allowed him to indulge in racing, and he soon began to make a name for himself in the sport. His success in rallies and trials  earned him a drive in the 1929 Monte Carlo Rally, piloting a Triumph Super Seven saloon. His first attempt in the prestigious rally was forgettable, but the succeeding year a seventh-place finish in the event won him a factory ride in an Invicta. Driving that car, he won the 1931 Monte Carlo Rally despite a mechanical trouble that cost him all the braking in one wheel.

After a brief stint at the wheel of a Riley Brooklands in the Alpine Rally, he joined Triumph Motor Company as Experimental Manager, which placed him in charge of Triumph’s rallying program. While at Triumph, he paid Alfa Romeo the ultimate compliment by literally duplicating the marque’s Monza engine, and the copy was installed in a lovely two-seater called the Dolomite. Unluckily, Healy’s Dolomite, one of just three assembled, was struck by a train in the 1934 Monte Carlo Rally.

Ambitions come to life

The Second World War was as shaking to Healey as the first had been. Triumph went into receivership, and he bounced to Humber, all the while nursing the belief  that at the war’s end, he would ultimately manufacture his own car that would have all the best attributes of the finest sporting models of the day. When VE and then VJ day came, Healey set his strategy in motion, wheedling a small supply of 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines from Riley.

The small engine was a gem, producing 100 horsepower, and Healey teamed it with a state-of-the-art chassis featuring a trailing link suspension. In British fashion, he left the construction and the body design  to outside firms, so the relative handful that were built at the time (1946-8) have rather distinctive looks.

Late in 1949, Healey struck a transaction with the staid Nash-Kelvinator Corporation, but not to build sporty refrigerators. Instead, it was Healey’s proposal  to manufacture sports cars using the Nash 3.8-liter six-cylinder engine. The Nash-Healey was destined strictly for America, and meanwhile, Healey cooked up another batch of automotive stew after signing a secret plan with Austin’s Leonard Lord to acquire the marque’s stolid A90 2.6-liter four-cylinder engine. Healey’s strategy was to fill the game between the aging, underpowered MG-TC and the modern but expensive Jaguar XK, and the result was Healey’s Mona Lisa, the Healey Hundred.

The car was an instant sensation.   In fact, so sensational that Lord offered to take over production of the vehicle from the  small Healey works. For a royalty on each car, Healey accepted the contract, which guaranteed much higher production than Healey’s manufacturing operations could ever have considered. The Austin-Healey 100 led to a 16-year partnership between Austin and its successor companies and Healey, and before the Fifties were finished,  the collaboration begat the Sprite.

Like the 100, the Sprite was designed to fill a market slot, in this case the hole in the market for rudimentary,  cheap  sports cars that had been filled by Austin 7 variants prior to the war. To keep it cheap, the primary objective, Healey specified as many stock Austin parts as possible, most of them coming from the A35. Power (if you could call it that) was furnished by a small four-cylinder engine with displacement of less than one liter (948 cubic centimeters, to be accurate.) With just 43 horsepower on tap, the Sprite wasn’t all that lively, even given that its curb weight was a svelte 1,500 pounds. Acceleration from zero to 60 miles per hour took nearly 21 seconds, but the tiny car was so much pleasurable to throw around that most forgave its power shortcomings.

The Sprite’s styling benefited from joyful accident. The upright headlights that gave the car its “bug-eye” nickname (“frogeye” in the UK) came about because Austin decided to let go the installation of a mechanism for concealing them under the hoodline during daylight hours. Feeling that such a system would be too complicated and expensive, the powers at Austin just left the headlights to jut into the breeze, giving the car its distinctive “face.” As another cost-saving method, Austin corporate tycoons also contemplated using identical front and rear body panels, but by the time production arrived, that idea had been put to rest, though the front and rear lines are remarkably similar.  Les Ireland and Gerry Coker share credit for the design.

Examples of cost-savings were everywhere in the car. The Sprite Mark I lacked exterior door handles, an exterior trunk opening (something it shared with several generations of the Chevrolet Corvette),  and a folding convertible top. A true roadster, the Sprite was fitted with side curtains instead of roll-up windows so to open the door you simply slipped your hand inside and used the interior handle. Because it was exposed to the elements, the car’s inside wasn’t carpeted either. Instead, the floorboards were shielded with ribbed rubber mats. Options included tonneau cover, factory hardtop,  heater,  and even the front bumper.

When launched in 1958, the little car was a winner, based largely on its fun-to-price ratio. The original Sprite had a recommended retail of $1,795 at the east coast port of entry, and it sold for less than 700 pounds in the UK. Over the course of its three-year product run, more than 49,500 Sprites were produced. In 1961,  the Bug-eye Sprite was repplaced by an all-new version that was accompanied by a closely related variant called the MG Midget. This was the beginning of more than a decade of “Spridgets,” but it was Healey’s initial Sprite that led the way.

Tagged with: Austin • sports car • top down • vintage automobile

Filed under: Top Classic Cars