1961 Austin-Healey Sprite

The Sprite made its debut before the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix as an inexpensive motor “a chap could keep in his bike shed.”

The little car was designed by the Donald Healey Motor Company and was produced in Abingdon at the MG factory. Originally to have had retractable lights, cost cutting at BMC gave the Sprite its iconic look and name—“Frog Eye” on the right side of the pond, and “Bug Eye” on the left. It was also the first mass-produced sports car to utilize unitary construction, where body panels take much of the structural stresses, as a result there was no trunk lid, as a way of bolstering structural integrity. Any luggage or the like got pushed into the good-sized space behind the seats where the spare lived.