North Bay British Car Club
INTRODUCTION
- Austin Healey Sprite & MG
In
1958 the BMC publicity department announced the new Austin Healey Sprite. A
small, low cost sports car designed to fill the hole in the market left by the
small pre-war Austin seven sports cars. The car was designed by the Healey motor
company within the bounds of their partnership with BMC. It was designed to
use as many parts from the corporate parts bin as possible. Most came from the
A35; front suspension, engine, gearbox and back axle. The steering rack was
that used on the Morris Minor. This use of off the shelf parts helped keep the
development costs to a minimum, thereby satisfying the need that the car should
be cheap to put into production. The initial plan was to produce a car which
had identical front and rear panels thereby saving tooling costs. This ideal
was however to prove too impractical but perhaps explains the similarity in
lines between the front and rear paneling on the mark I sprite.
The initial body styling was by Gerry Coker and The initial design incorporated
headlights which pivoted up into position like the Porsche 928. This radical
idea had to be dropped because of the difficulty of producing a cheap and reliable
mechanism to move the light units into place. Gerry left the Healey Motor company
in 1957 and his successor Les Ireland, finished off the design with the fixed
upright lighting arrangement with which the carwent into production. this arrangement
of the lighting gave the car its frog like appearance and led to the mark I
becoming affectionately known as the frogeye, (or bugeye in the USA). When first
launched the car cost £660 including tax in the UK and $1,795 at East
Coast POE in the USA. The car was produced at the MG factory in Abingdon alongside
the larger Austin Healeys and the current MG product range. The original plan
was to produce the car at Austin's plant at Longbridge but the design of the
Sprite made it impossible to fit the power train from underneath the car and
the MG factory was the only plant available to BMC at the time which could fit
the units from above. In all around 49,500 mark I Sprites were built.
1961 saw the introduction of the replacement for the Sprite Mk I, the car had
undergone a major restyling. The front end was restyled by Healeys at Warwick
along more traditional lines: the one piece front end of the frogeye was gone,
being replaced by a more traditional layout of fixed front wings and a separate
bonnet. The rear end of the car was re-styled by Syd Enever's team at MG and
closely resembled the embryonic MGB. It is still unclear why BMC asked the two
design teams to work on styling different parts of the same vehicle and specifically
instructed MG not to talk to Healeys about what they were doing. However, with
the two teams based in such close proximity to each other they very soon got
together to ensure that the changes being made would agree when brought together
on the same vehicle. One can only speculate as to the outcome if these two teams
had not colluded on their design work. Mechanically the mark II sprite was almost
identical to the mark I although the engine was slightly tuned to handle the
extra body-weight of the new car. One month after the introduction of the Sprite
Mk II an MG badged version was released, taking its name from the pre-war small
MG's it was called the Midget.
It wasn't until 1962 that mechanical changes were to follow: The Morris Minor
1098cc engine was fitted along with a stronger gearbox, an electronic tachometer,
front disc brakes and a host of other small detail changes. This model known
at the time as the Sprite 1100 has come to be known as the mark II 1/2. The
mark III designation was to be saved until 1964.
The Sprite Mk III retained essentially the same styling as the mark II but the
engine was carefully scrutinized and modified after the serious crankshaft problems
encountered on the mark II. More notably there was a major change to the rear
suspension arrangement: The earlier Sprites had used an innovative design with
quarter elliptic springs and trailing location arms, whilst an exiting concept
the original arrangement was often accused of being somewhat twitchy when driven
hard. The half elliptic arrangement which replaced it gave a smoother ride without
any loss of the Sprite's by now legendary road holding power. An innovative
piece of design work saw wind up windows shoe-horned into the slim-line doors
of the mark III replacing the more traditional removable sidescreens of the
earlier models. The cockpit was revamped to bring the styling more up to date
and the now familiar black crinkle finish dash appeared for the first time.
An interesting point to note is that this is the only model of Sprite to be
fitted with color keyed hoods from the factory, so that red cars (for example),
had red hoods.
In October 1966 the Sprite Mk IV was announced, the engine was the newer 1275cc
A series unit giving much more power for a car that was becoming comparatively
sluggish. the MG variant (by now at Mark III) had lost it's distinctive chrome
strip down the center of the bonnet and the distinction between the two models
was becoming noticeable less prevalent. The mark IV also sported an improved
folding hood to replace the older removable hoods on previous models. Within
three years the beginning of the end for the Sprite was in sight, the Austin
Healey models were no longer to be exported to the USA, only the MG models were
exported taking advantage of the more popular MG name.
October 1969 saw a facelift operation on both the Sprite and the Midget: Rostyle
wheels, black sills, slim-line bumpers accompanied major trim changes. Now the
only difference between the two models was the badges, from a distance it was
impossible to tell the MG Midget from the AH Sprite. although these changes
radically altered the look of both the Sprite and the Midget BMC did not assign
a new mark designation; they remained as the mark IV and III respectively. However,
they have been unofficially dubbed later as the mark V Sprite and mark IV Midget
to distinguish them from the earlier versions with the same mark designation.
By 1971 BMC had gone, swallowed up in a take-over to form the ill fated British
Leyland, significantly the rival company Triumph was now part of the same corporation
as Austin and MG. The agreement with the Healey Motor Company ended, and the
Healeys did not feel that they could work with BL in the same manner that they
had with BMC so no new agreements were sought. The license on the use of the
Healey name ended with the original BMC agreement so BL had to remove the Healey
name from the Sprite. From January 1971 the Sprite was know as simply the Austin
Sprite and was simply a stop gap whilst the Austin dealer franchises were re-negotiated
to allow them to sell MG models. Only 1,022 Austin Sprites were made before
sadly the last Sprite left Abingdon in July 1971, representing the last of a
line of 129,362 cars.
Production of the MG Midget continued with a change to the cockpit switch-gear
replacing the original toggle switches with those of a rocker type to meet US
legislation. The rear wheel arches were changed to a round section instead of
the original square Enever design evident from the mark II Sprite onwards.
Major controversial changes due to meet new US legislation were to appear on
the MG Midget in October 1974: The ride height was increased, the front and
rear ends of the car sprouted heavyweight rubber coated bumpers and perhaps
most controversial to the die hard MG purists there was now a Triumph power
unit under the bonnet in the form of the 1500 Spitfire engine. the gearbox was
now an all synchromesh unit as used on the Morris Marina. These changes helped
to reverse the sales decline of the Midget and sales rose until 1976. Only three
years later however Michael Edwards (by now in charge of BL), announced that
sportscar production at Abingdon would cease and the MG factory would close.
The Midget continued until 1979, the last car to roll off the production line
at Abingdon was a appropriately colored black and went straight into the BL
Heritage collection (now owned by British Motor Heritage). The total number
of MG Midgets produced by close of business at Abingdon was 226,526 giving a
combined total of 355,888 "Sprites" in all. It is interesting to note
that despite the various changes to the Sprite over its 21 year production the
basic chassis remained the same, the only modifications were to the rear suspension
mountings and the addition of extra strengthening when the rubber bumpers were
added. On the very last Midget the front end of the sill still retained the
radiused kick up for the one piece frogeye bonnet.
Links to Other Marques
| TRIUMPH Intro | Spitfire |
