• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

New York City in 1972

Share this page

U

urchin

Jedi Trainee
Offline
I noticed this post on a Facebook page. This is Broadway and 132nd St. in New York City in 1972. So, experts, is it a Sprite or a Midget?

Jeff

Broadway and 132srt 1972.jpg
 
My guess too. I know these are very small cars but do you think he just hit the kid in the foreground?
 
Ouch. Hit a pole head-on?
 
Can't be a Russian; cold war was hot in '72 and Ivan was persona-non-grata, but there were lots of Poles. My neighbors were Piwowarczyk and Przybylowski.

A couple of weeks ago there was a forum that asked about winter traction. The tires on Mr Ouch above are real snow tires. And they work.

Blueghost.
 
I noticed the snow tires on the car in the photo, too.

Back in 2003 I had to use my '78 MGB as a winter car so I went to a local auto shop to purchase snow tires for it. The mechanic said I was the only radial snow tires he'd installed on a sports car in a LONG time. The following year I had to do the same for my '80 TR-7, which naturally, required 13" tires instead of the B's 14 ".

Jeff
 
Sprite... I believe the wheel covers have the AH on them... (can't really tell) but did the Midget ever come with wheel covers (hub cabs)?
 
Sprite -steel wheels that appear to be grey and the dog pan hubcaps. Note the snow tires on the rear. I very distinctly recall until the mid-1980s that my father used to always change the rear tires to snow tires in November and then rotate them back off in March.

That doesn't look too pretty. Am I imagining things, or does that look like a cracked windsheild? The Spridget is one car that you probably don't want to have an accident -- any accident with.
 
Cool picture! That's Harlem! As of 2008 the spot where the photo was taken was one of the few neighborhoods in Manhattan where you could get cars fixed and bodywork done. Columbia University, which is about 1/2 mile away, bought up blocks and blocks of it, persuaded the city to condemn it as "blighted," and tore it all down. Today they are building a new campus there--but I think the city is poorer in a way for having allowed yet another sort of blue collar neighborhood to be sanitized. But, the University is the Big Gorilla in that part of town, and they pretty much get what they want.

The bridge carries the No. 1 subway up to northern Manhattan and the Bronx--I passed this point 1000s of times when I lived in NYC.
 
I wish...Paul!

By the way, this photo was in my wife's high school year book in '68 (Morristown High School, NJ).

This was obviously taken near The Square in Morristown. We don't know the car or the fellows but I drive past this spot all the time now.

I wonder if Peter C. knows these guys or the car? (he's a Morristown grad from the same era).

morristown-high-nj-68.jpg
 
Last edited:
Look at all that long hair! I remember that era. If only I had some money back then to race! I would have killed myself.
Jerry
 
1. I believe midgets did come with a steel wheel, hubcap combo similar to the Sprites in the sixties, as I recall the hubcaps were plain, no lettering at all, much rarer than the AH items these days, maybe more of the MGs (very slightly higher priced than the Sprites) came gussied up with options like wire wheels, while the Sprites were more likely to be the strippers?

2. My brother bought a 63 Sprite with snows on the back and the early quarter elliptic rear suspension, to call the dry road handling squirrely would be an extreme understatement.
 
glemon said:
1. I believe midgets did come with a steel wheel, hubcap combo similar to the Sprites in the sixties, as I recall the hubcaps were plain, no lettering at all, much rarer than the AH items these days, maybe more of the MGs (very slightly higher priced than the Sprites) came gussied up with options like wire wheels, while the Sprites were more likely to be the strippers?
Click to expand...

That would certainly explain why I've had to throw so much money at my Sprite...she is a stripper at heart :highly_amused:

In all seriousness, I believe you would be correct. From what I've read, the MG was considered the "higher" line than the Austin-Healey, and a fully "loaded" Austin-Healey was roughly equivalent of your "average" Midget. A bare-bones Midget would have been a rarer bird.
 
glemon said:
1. I believe midgets did come with a steel wheel, hubcap combo similar to the Sprites in the sixties, as I recall the hubcaps were plain, no lettering at all, much rarer than the AH items these days, maybe more of the MGs (very slightly higher priced than the Sprites) came gussied up with options like wire wheels, while the Sprites were more likely to be the strippers?
Click to expand...

I thought all Midgets came standard with wire wheels, but I was incorrect. Here's a pic:

vesyrk.jpg


I'm almost certain, though, that all Midgets came with the chrome side trim and bonnet trim and not the Sprite. Other differences, of course, were the grille and badging.
 
When I lived in West Caldwell, NJ ('72-'73) there was a local guy who drove a 289 Cobra on the street all the time. I saw it at the grocery store, the post office, etc.
At the time I was driving an ex-racing Mini on the street so this didn't seem that weird to me.
This was before there were any Cobra replicas so I'm sure it was real.

In 2012 I drove my race car through the public streets of Pittsburgh as seen ~HERE~
 
Back
Top