Austin-Healey Sebring Sprite

Lore & Background

For the 1959 Twelve Hours of Sebring, the BMC Competition Department entered three Austin-Healey Sprites prepared by Donald's son Geoffrey Healey at Cape Works. Fitted with prototype disc brakes, wire wheels and tyres from Dunlop, larger twin 1-inch SU carburettors, and twin-plate racing clutches, the cars finished first, second and third in their class. This success in the FIA World Sportscar Championship race gave valuable publicity to BMC in North America. The Healeys subsequently offered to bring customers' Sprites to a similar specification using twin 1-inch SU H4 carburettors and a complete Girling braking system with 8-inch 'Type 9' calliper discs at the front and 8-inch drums at the rear.

FIA regulations permitted the use of 'special bodies', so a small number of Sebring Sprites were fitted with coupé bodywork in aluminium alloy and glassfibre. The most attractive examples were devised by race and rally driver John Sprinzel, who had won the 1959 RAC British Rally Championship. Sprinzel commissioned coachbuilders Williams & Pritchard to produce the bodies. Later, other Sprites received similar alloy bodywork from Alec Goldie and Fred Faulkner of Robert Peel Sheet Metal Works. The name 'Sebring Sprite' became a generic term for any Sprite with disc brakes, and later for any Sprite with coupé or fastback bodywork.

In 1960, Stirling Moss drove a Sebring Sprite to a class win and second overall in the four-hour race for GT cars of under one litre at Sebring. Sprinzel drove a prototype Sprite with a GRP Falcon kit-car body to another class win and 41st overall in the twelve-hour race. Leaving the Healeys in December 1960, Sprinzel launched his Williams & Pritchard-bodied coupé at the Racing Car Show. His personal Sebring Sprite, registered PMO 200, campaigned at Sebring and in international rallies, culminating in an outright win in the Targa Rusticana rally at the beginning of 1962.

Reader's Guide

The Sebring Sprite's significance lies in its recognition by the FIA as a separate model, allowing it to compete in homologated classes. Its class domination at the 1959 Twelve Hours of Sebring demonstrated the potential of the small Sprite platform on an international stage. The car's legacy includes the work of John Sprinzel, who founded Speedwell Performance Conversions Ltd and later the Healey Speed Equipment Division, and whose Sprinzel Sebring Sprites became prized possessions within the Austin-Healey fraternity. Over the years, the cars were sold to privateers who raced and rallied them, and they became objects of veneration. Enthusiasts sought out the cars, sometimes discovering them in advanced stages of deterioration. Today, the cars are cherished classics that can be driven to and from competitions just like the originals were in their day. Subsequently, numbers of other Sprites were modified as period replicas of the original Speedwell GTs and Sprinzel Sebring Sprites, built to the same homologation specification. One such car is the 'Lumbertubs' Sprite, built in 1963 by brothers Brian and Ken Myers, which later acquired a Ford engine and gearbox and gained success in sprints and hillclimbs.

Did You Know?

• The Sebring Sprite was homologated by the FIA on 17 September 1960.
• Beatrice Shilling, a Second World War hero, owned and raced the Sebring Sprite registered 888 HPA.