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The Austin Healey Sprite Chronicles
Introduction
Welcome to the Austin Healey Sprite Chronicles. My name is Jack and I am here with Bertie to share my love of the Sprite. (I have since sold Bertie, but don’t despair, I replaced him with a 1971 Arkley MG Midget). I don’t consider myself an expert or the final authority on any of the information I am going to share. These are impressions, beliefs, and suggestions based upon my experience and research. Anyone is free to agree or disagree. Do your own research and decide for yourself. That being said I hope, whether you agree or disagree, that you at least share my adoration for this fun and wonderful automobile.
Bertie is a 1969 Mark IV Austin Healey Sprite. 1969 was the final year, and the Mark IV the last series of the Sprites imported into the United States.
Bertie has the inline 4-cylinder, OHV, 1275cc (77.8 c.i.) engine that develops a neck snapping 65 horse-power. It is the British Motor Corporation (BMC) A-series engine first used in 1951 in the Austin A30 Saloon and had an initial capacity of 803cc’s and developed 42.5 horse-power. More about that later. The transmission is a four-speed with a non-synchronized first gear.
Bertie is, other than badging and trim, the same car as the MG Midget Mark III, and the Sprite and Midget are sometimes referred collectively as Spridgets.
Bertie is a pretty clean survivor that has been refreshed somewhat without being fully restored. I personally prefer this as it makes him more usable to me as driver rather than a show car. I was lucky to find him in the condition that I did but an example that is more in need of TLC should not be a turn off as long as you aren’t afraid of getting your hands dirty.
The paint is not original and was not professionally done but it doesn’t look too bad. The flag on the front is a wrap. It wouldn’t have been my choice but the previous owner had it done and I will probably leave it until such a time as I decide to have the car repainted.
The cable and the guts to the hood latch are missing so the hood pins are used out of necessity, not just for show.
The SU carbs have been replaced with a Weber 2-barrel, a popular conversion that some people think makes the car more drivable. Purists, of course, hate it. They do negate the need to add oil to the pots of the old SU’s and you don’t have the problem of keeping the two carbs synchronized.
The factory seats have been swapped out for a pair of Racaros that are more comfortable and that were substantially less expensive than attempting to rebuilt and recover the originals.
The shocks are a little weak and need refreshing.
In the Beginning
I purchased my first Sprite in 1972. I was working for the Ford dealership in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and a young man and his mother traded it in. I bought it before it even officially went on the lot. It was a 1964 Mark III with the 1098cc engine, no outside door handles, and with the removeable side curtains. It was pretty well worn but was a good runner and I drove it everywhere. It was a faded turquoise color that was obviously not an original paint scheme.
It made several trips back and forth to Chattanooga. It went to Atlanta, Guntersville, Alabama, and all through North Georgia.
I remember a trip back from Smyrna, Tennessee to Chattanooga with my Uncle Tommy. We had a large tent bag behind the seats that completely blocked the rear-view mirror. If we wanted to see what was going on behind us, or see whether or not we could change lanes, Tommy had to climb up in the passenger seat to peer over the tent bag and then let me know when it was safe.
Reaching the top of Monteagle Mountain, we discovered that our brakes had gone. Not just faded, not just weak, but all the way to the floor gone. We were able to pull over and get the car stopped using the emergency brake. We quickly found the cause of the failure, a broken brake line, that had leaked out all of the hydraulic fluid. We debated our options for a couple of minutes and decided to ride it out. We came down the mountain with no brakes, passing everyone. All of the cars that had passed us coming up the other side of the mountain watched in amazement as this tiny, overloaded, Sprite screamed past them at speeds approaching 90 mph while some guy kneeling backwards over the seat, and staring over the top of the tent bag, shouted directions to the driver. We reached the bottom safely and continued on our way. Even though we were running about 55 mph on the highway (except during the adventure down the mountain) and the other traffic 70-80 mph we were all the way to South Pittsburgh before any of those cars we had passed finally caught up with us. Everyone honked and waved as they went by.
A short while later we took a drive to Guntersville, Alabama where Tommy was soon taking a job with the Army Corp of Engineers at Guntersville Dam. He had recently gotten out of the Air Force and decided that though he didn’t want to make a career of the military he did like the government benefits. We bought a couple of British style driving caps and started off from Chattanooga. We left I-24 at South Pittsburg and took back roads from there. We visited the dam, saw the sights around Guntersville and stopped for gas. As I was fueling, outside Guntersville, a station wagon pulled up to the pumps. It was from Springfield, Missouri, and in the back seat was a young man I had gone to school with when I lived in Springfield about three years earlier. He looked miserable at 20 years old and riding in the back seat of his family’s station wagon. He appeared a bit jealous as I finished fueling, spoke to him briefly, and drove away in my open-air sports car with a hi-ho Silver and a tip of my jaunty cap. A few minutes later I came back and picked up Tommy.
Tommy said later that he went into the store after he moved to Guntersville and they recognized him and recalled that day that the two guys in the tiny car and the caps had pulled into the station and then one of them had driven off without the other. The things that people recall sometimes amaze me.
On another occasion a friend and I made the trip from Smyrna to Chattanooga, beer was involved (I know, it was totally irresponsible, but it was over 40 years ago), and the 2-hour trip took almost 5 hours because we got distracted. I got distracted a lot back then. That’s all I can tell you because I’m not sure what the statute of limitations is.
And of course, there is the infamous round trip to Atlanta that Roger and I took. We weren’t going for any particular purpose other than an excuse for a road trip.
The drive down was uneventful though we spent much of it on Highway 41 rather than I-75. We saw the Big Chicken in Marietta and drove on into the city. We weren’t sure what to do. I suggested Under Ground Atlanta but Roger wasn’t interested. We just drove around for a while but the charm faded quickly due to traffic and we spent little time there before deciding to return to Chattanooga. That was when the trip got interesting.
Again, there were, uh, distractions, and somehow, we took the wrong path at the I-75 and I-85 split. For the first couple of hours, we didn’t pay much attention to the highway signs, or the unfamiliar landscape, or the fact that the sun was setting behind us rather than off to our left. In fact, we didn’t notice anything amiss until Roger finally looked up and saw the sign for Royston, Georgia, which is nearly at the South Carolina border. We thought at first that it said Boston so we were relieved when the Twilight Zone moment passed, we read the sign correctly, and realized that we had only gone a hundred or so miles out of our way.
Not wanting to go back through Atlanta we decided to cut across North Georgia, through the mountains, without a map, and using the same unerring sense of direction that had taken us almost to South Carolina in the first place. At one point we dead ended at a fire tower. I guess the dirt road should have been a clue. Like I said, there were distractions.
There is nothing like driving down an empty highway, in the dark, through the mountains, with no idea where you are, in a tiny car with a six-gallon tank. My fuel gauge needle was bouncing off the empty mark, though as I’ve noted before the fuel gauges in these cars are not very accurate but, usually they read high. We must have been nearly coasting when we finally pulled up to a tiny store, about to close, with a single pump outside. We fueled up, bought a map, and breathed a sigh of relief, until we noticed on the map that we were still over a hundred miles from home.
At one point we came around a curve to find something in the road directly in our path. I slammed on the brakes and the little Healey did a little tail wagging and then went sideways before stopping. Then the deer in the headlights, that had been standing in the road like a deer in the headlights, wagged its tail and ran off into the trees. Roger, who was rarely perturbed noted, almost as an aside, “that would have done some damage.”
We finally got back to Roger’s about 3 A.M. after leaving Atlanta about 5 P.M. the previous evening. God, I miss those days.
I finally sold the car to my brother in about 1974 and I lived without a Sprite until I bought Bertie in April of 2019. I wonder now how I managed so long without another one.
Driving Impressions
You don’t just step into an Austin Healey Sprite as you do with most cars. You lower yourself into it much like climbing into a cockpit. With an overall exterior length of about 11 feet 5 inches, an exterior width of about 4 feet and 7 inches (and that includes the outside door handles that added about 2 inches to the width of the car from the previous Mark III model), and a height of 4 feet from ground to the top of the windshield it isn’t surprising that accommodations are a little tight.
In neutral, with the emergency brake applied, pull out the fuel enrichment knob, turn the key and you can hear the sound of the electric fuel pump as it starts moving fuel from the tank to the carbs. A well sorted engine starts quickly. The fuel enrichment knob can be pushed back in almost immediately after the car starts but it is a good idea to let the car warm up a minute or so before you put it into gear.
The exhaust has a sweet throaty growl to it that belies the tiny size of the engine. Release the brake, push in the clutch, shift into first and away you go. First gear whines but that is normal.
Mechanical noises are normal and can be a little worrisome if you have never driven an antique, open air, sports car, but you soon get used to them. It won’t take you very long to figure out which noises are normal and which ones mean trouble. Odors are the same because unlike driving modern automobiles you aren’t isolated and insulated from either your car or the outside world. You are pretty much one with your car and you can smell the engine, the oil, the heated metal, as well as everything in the air around you.
You won’t shoot off the line, these cars weren’t built for fast 0-60 times, speed builds slowly but steadily. With a ground clearance of about 5 inches and the top of the door barely 2 feet off the ground you feel like you are driving an oversize go-kart. 50 miles an hour feels much faster. Steering is tight and precise, almost direct, again much like a go-kart. The Sprite rolls through most curves without need for braking and with very little lean. More modern tube shocks replacing the old lever shocks and wider tires are often used as “upgrades” to improve handling. These cars were designed to slide through hard turns not to grip too hard and apply undue tension on mounting points. While hitting uneven pavement in the middle of a curve can be a bit unnerving with the car hopping and jumping until it regains traction, it is usually more a result of the shocks being worn or not maintained rather than the supposed primitive suspension components.
Top speed is in the neighborhood of 80 mph but, in practice, 55 to 60 is the comfort range. Drive it harder for long periods of time and expect more maintenance and breakdowns.
Braking is relatively weak but emergency braking is seldom required. This is another area where upgrades can be made if you wish to spend the time and money.
You can hear your radio over the sound of the engine and the wind if you have decent speakers.
Expect to add a pint of oil every 800 miles or so, and top off the coolant periodically. These are small engines working very hard and using oil and coolant is not necessarily a sign of problems unless you are finding leaks, losing oil pressure, or over-heating.
Fuel gauges and speedometers can be ridiculously inaccurate. I suspect that they were more accurate when the cars were newer. At 50 mph showing Bertie is actually running about 43 mph, at 60 he is running at 50, and at 70 showing he is screaming along at about 56 mph. Surprisingly the odometer loses a mile about every 37 miles of travel. Admittedly, part of the discrepancy could be the result of tire size.
Bertie’s fuel gauge can be showing more than half a tank of fuel when I am actually down to about a gallon left so, I keep an eye on my odometer to help me determine when I need to add fuel. Fuel tank has about a 6-gallon capacity and Bertie gets about 34 miles to the gallon so just over 200 miles on a tank of gas but I certainly don’t advise that you push it to the limit. Fuel tanks for Midgets increased to a 7-gallon capacity in January, 1972. Most new replacement tanks will be of the larger size.
Expect a lot of waves, honking of horns, people waving as you pass. When parked expect strangers to walk over to ask questions or to share memories. These cars are definitely not suitable for unsociable people.
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