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A Brief History of the Spridget...

Before we start let’s make the origin of the Spridget clear. The car is an Austin-Healey. The original ‘Frogeyed’ Sprite was wholly designed by Healey using mostly Austin A 35 parts. When the Mk2 came out with new styling it was joined by the Mk1 MG Midget. The running gear was unchanged save for a small increase in power, and the chassis/suspension unaltered. MG did have some input into the rear-end styling, but beyond that the MG Midget was a badge-engineered Healey, no more, no less.

As time went on the Mk3 Sprite (and Mk2 Midget) introduced wind-up windows and semi- as opposed to quarter-elliptic rear springs, neither of which changed the essential character of the Sprite. The biggest and best change of all came in 1967 when the car was given a detuned version of the Cooper ‘S’ 1275 A-series engine. It was said at the time that the engine was detuned for reliability and to reduce insurance costs – neither were true, it was simply that with the ‘S’s 75 bhp instead of the Midget’s 65 bhp the MG Midget would be faster than the ‘flagship’ MGB.

In 1970 British Leyland (hawk...spit...) did the dirty on small manufacturers who’d given class to their generally miserable product range, and axed both the Healey and Cooper name. The Austin Sprite (Healey was therefore paid no royalties) soldiered on for a year but then thankfully died before the ultimate indignity – the rubber-bumpered MG Midget – was thrust on a jaded public in 1974. If you wanted to screw the handling on a lightweight sportscar, few solutions would be more effective than jacking the suspension up an inch and putting a hundredweight of mass at either end. To add insult to injury the 1275 A-series, a bullet-proof motor capable of being tuned to give 100 bhp/ltr, was replaced by the Triumph Spitfire lump, allegedly because it gave a little more power and torque than the 1275 as standard. In reality it was because the 1275 was stuggling to meet Californian emission regs. As mentioned above the ‘S’ type head and cam would have given far more power than the Triumph motor. The Triumph was much more limited in terms of tuning and ran its bearings after 30,000 miles. The irony being that the 1275 engine continued in production and was further modified right up to the mid ‘90’s. Yes I know some people love 1500’s, but they could have been so much better...

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