It all begins on a lazy early fall afternoon in 1984. My brother has just done this “deal” for a whole lot of VW parts plus cars in various states of disrepair. Sure enough, when I get to his place there is about a quarter acre of VW stuff, and there he was, going through the collection and admiring the booty. It was one of those situations where the price was right but there was a hook; he had to take it all…..no cherry picking, all or nothing; “where do you want it?”

Well, over to one side of the field is this forlorn little two door nondescript roadster that obviously did not have German heritage. “As a matter of fact”, Bob says, “it was passed off as being some kind of British car”. And, I make the classic mistake of asking “so, what are you going to do with that little car?” And he says “I think you should have it”. This goes back and forth where soon enough it’s decided that the fate of the car, if I don’t adopt it, is on to the scrap yard with the other stuff with no resale or redeemable value. Well….we can’t let that happen! So, I buy it for two hundred twenty-five bucks and proceed to drag it the five miles back to my house.

Now, remember I don’t even know what this car is. During the next several days spent walking around and prodding this newly acquired prize I find indications that it has an Austin Healey badge and unmistaken British heritage. Okay, that has to be good…I’ve heard of the Austin Healey sports cars. But I had always pictured them as being bigger and sleeker somehow?

So I hit the books, start asking around and, remember this is before the “Internet”, start doing what research I can on British cars. Well, there it is, an Austin Healey Sprite! And it turns out in my subsequent exploration that it is a fairly significant car as Sprites go. This is a first edition version of the square-bodied classic AH Sprite, and a follow on from the original and most identifiable “Bug-eye” configuration. The chassis number identified the car as being produced in October of 1961 and sold as one of the early 1961 / 1962 Sprites. It is fairly obvious that it was made for the US market as all of the control systems are set up for a left hand driver.

Well, okay, I’m feeling a lot better about this. It isn’t the 100-4 I had in mind, but it is an Austin Healey and come on, how many people can say they have an Austin Healey after all!