Sprites turn heads at Pa. auto show

CARLISLE, Pa. — Fred Bender last owned a sports car when he was in college about 40 years ago.

On May 20, Bender took possession of a 1968 MG Midget won in a drawing at Sprite Jubilee in Carlisle, Pa. The event marked the 50th anniversary on the introduction of the Austin-Healey Sprite Mk. I, known as the Bugeye or Frogeye.

Bender, the director of pharmacy at University Medical Center in Greenville, went to the event with his college roommate who recently restored a Bugeye.

Bender's reaction to winning the car? "I can't believe it," he said.

His car while in college in Erie, Pa., was an Innocenti Spyder, an Italian car based on the Sprite, that's now exceedingly rare.

The Innocenti was wrecked in an accident and Bender bought another car. The Innocenti and sports cars remained a dream.

The drawing was held at the closing banquet of the five-day event in Carlisle, in south central Pennsylvania. More than 200 people and approximately 120 cars took part, coming from as far as New Mexico, California, Canada and South Carolina.

Although Bugeyes dominated the event, there were a number of "square" Sprites, the later version of the car, as well as special-bodied Sprites.

Also represented was the MG Midget, another version of the Sprite and likewise produced by British Motor Corp. in England. Sprites were imported into the United States until 1969 but continued in the United Kingdom until 1971. The MG Midget was imported until it ceased production in 1980.

This year's event was the fifth over the last 25 years, all of them on five-year anniversaries. The first in 1988 was for the car's 30th anniversary. Organized by Rick Moses, a Hershey, Pa., dentist, the Jubilees are held in Carlisle, the venue for many car shows each year. It ran concurrently with the annual Carlisle Import and Kit/Replicar Show.

Healey VIPs

Among the invited guests at the event were Gerry Coker, the designer of both the Austin-Healey 100 and the Bugeye; John Sprinzel, an Englishman who raced and rallied in Sprites including the car's first win in the 1958 Coupe des Alpes, and later produced special bodies for the Sprite; John Colgate and Ray Stone, two Americans who raced Sprites; and Daniel Stapleton, an Englishman who has written magazine articles and a book on performance tuning for Sprites and Midgets.

They spoke at various times to the gathering. Coker, who had left Healey Motor Co. by the time the Bugeye was introduced, said he tried to design a "poor boy's Ferrari."

Coker designed the original Sprite with folding headlights and a more aggressive front end. He left Healey in 1957 and moved to the United States to work for Chrysler and Ford. When he first saw the finished car in 1958 in a Detroit showroom with the upright headlights, he told a friend, "That's not my car."

Coker said, "I couldn't see the car; all I could see was those bloody headlights." But, as the years have gone by, he said he has changed his mind. "I think the thing that gives the car character is the headlights, so now I claim the car," he said, drawing laughter from the crowd.

Coker has never owned a Healey, either the Big Healey, the Sprite or its MG Midget variant. He said he could not afford the insurance on a Healey 100 when he lived in England and wanted to buy a Sprite when he moved to the States. He said that Donald Healey, the founder of Healey Motor Co., told him to "buy a decent car with air conditioning," and he followed that advice.

During the five-day event, attendees went on mass drives to the Antique Automobile Collectors Association museum in Hershey and to the Gettysburg battlefield as well as to various restaurants in the area.

The drives and other events were held mostly through heavy rain and temperatures in the 50s, typical English weather. Sprinzel, the rally driver, noted at the closing dinner that the organizers had asked the "fairy in charge of weather for good weather, but she thought you meant English Sprite weather."

Another attendee put it this way: "These cars are moveable art. If you don't want to drive them in the rain, put them in the living room."

Glenn Surrette is a former newspaper reporter and copy editor who lives in Charleston.