The Austin Healey Sprite on the HERO-ERA Arrive and Drive fleet will be joining the High Smileage Club on the main display at the Scramble on Sunday 7 January.
The main lawn will showcase cars through the years that are guaranteed to bring a smile to their driver’s face, whatever the road.
Few cars represent that quite like the ‘Frogeye’, its crescent radiator grinning beneath the two unmistakable headlights. Gerry Coker designed them to retract flat, aiding the aerodynamic profile, but for BMC’s budget constraints to step in. The result is that endearing face.
A buzzy 1275cc A-series combines with the low weight and small footprint for an absorbing experience. It’ll touch 85 mph if the road is straight enough, ideally with a slight decline, and nothing gets in the way, and the wind is behind you. But that’s not the point of the Sprite, or indeed the High Smileage Club celebration. This is a car that can brighten up nipping out for milk, roof up or down.
Class victory at Sebring with a works-modified car in 1959 was later immortalised by the lines of ‘Sebring Sprites’ in the early 1960s, but America had already taken the little car to heart by then.
‘Frogeyes’, or ‘Bugeyes’ Stateside, lasted only three years until BMC’s cost cutting trimmed yet more and it became indistinguishable from the MG Midget in an exercise in badge engineering.
You’ll find the HERO-ERA Frogeye in the High Smileage Club on Sunday 7 January, along with a Porsche 911 Dakar and more.
