Austin-Healey Sebring Sprite

The Austin-Healey Sebring Sprite was a small sports car, a modified Austin-Healey Sprite with Girling disc brakes and engine and chassis improvements, built by the Donald Healey Motor Company at its Cape Works in Warwick and at the firm Speed Equipment Division in London. The name came from the class successes of works Sprites at the 12 Hours of Sebring in March 1959, when three cars entered by the BMC competition department finished first, second and third in their class. The sport governing body, the FIA, recognised the Sebring Sprite as a separate model and homologated it on 17 September 1960. A small number received aluminium or glassfibre coupe bodies, the best known being the Williams and Pritchard coupes commissioned by the rally driver John Sprinzel, whose own firm also built Sebring Sprites in London. In time the name came to mean any Sprite with disc brakes or with coupe or fastback bodywork, and surviving cars are prized classics.