News from John Sprinzel - 20th March, 2009 (up-dated with photo 6th May)

Caryl and I had a great trip to Australia last November, and though it was all a bit tiring, doing five events in one week, we really had a ball. The Sydney and Melbourne area Sprite Clubs are most enthusiastic, especially as our favourite car was assembled in Oz for some years. Also the Healey Owners club in Victoria has many Sprite members, plus the use of the finest club premises I have ever visited. They are actually owned by Motor Clubs - Jaguar and Triumph I believe, and feature large and comfortable rooms with bar and a stage complete with a big screen for films where I showed the 1958 Shell Alpine Rally DVD which has many terrific clips of the three Sprites in the car's successful International Rally debut. The walls of the clubhouse are lined with super pictures from the golden days of motorsport, and have two panels with famous signatures. Distances in Australia are, of course, huge, and our trip with the Bug Eye Barn's owner Tony Bennetto to Ray English's home near the coast involved a hard day of driving through the area which has since been devastated by those forest fires. We stayed a couple of days with Ray and enjoyed his famous "Sprite Room" where one of the make's best known historians keeps an incredible collection of records and memorabilia. His own Sebring Sprite (J.S is pictured right with Ray's beautiful car) which he has owned for many years, from back when he was racing very competitively, is in wonderful condition and in regular use, so we collected our take-out dinner and the morning papers each day. The final event in Victoria was a wonderful dinner and Sprite enthusiasts from as far afield as Brisbane and Adelaide joined in an evening celebrating the Frogeye.

Next up will be the July "Conclave" of North American Healey Clubs, which will be held in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. These annual meets are superbly organized and have literally hundreds of Healey cars and Healey boats on display. The condition of these cars is awe-inspiring, and is a tribute to the enthusiasm of American and Canadian owners of British Sports Cars. The week long event will give me a chance to spend time with two of the Special Guests - Peter Riley and Anne Wisdom, who were both very successful work's drivers not only in the "Big" Healeys, but also in Spridgets - Anne, who was also our first secretary at Speedwell, did two events, the RAC and Corsica, in Sebring Sprites with Pat Moss. They were also good friends and near neighbours when Caryl and I had our small farm close to theirs a few miles from Silverstone Circuit. Some of you may have met son Tim, who was very active driving the service vehicle backing up and fettling on many of the Classic Rallies in recent years.

My current Frog Eye PMO 200, is still going strong after sixteen years on Molokai, where it is my only car, but with just sixty miles of paved road, our island is a perfect Sprite place. In that time I have never ever had the hood up, which does show something of our climate.

Happy Sprite-ing and Aloha, 

John  

Hi there!

Enjoying your reports on Goodwood and Gaydon, wonderful stuff and great pictures as always. Caryl and I were very sorry indeed that we had to miss out, but promises are promises, and I couldn't let Rick down after all the effort he puts into his Sprite five-yearly celebrations. At the Pennsylvania Jubilee, it rained pretty much most of the time - as is usual in Carlisle at that time of the year, but the sun did peek out now and then, and at least the Gymkhana was held in the dry and had a good turnout. Well over a hundred Sprites turned out and included Danny Margulies' Speedwell GT in superb condition, probably the second or third ever built back in late 1959. About two hundred and thirty enthusiasts braved the weather to enjoy a very full program of indoor and outdoor events. Daniel Stapleton flew over from the Uk to give his popular tech.sessions which are always well attended, and Sprite body designer Gerry Coker and his wife Marion were also in attendance, chatting with everyone of those exciting days at Warwick in the fifties. Perhaps the most emotional moment for me was meeting up with John Colgate, whom I had not seen since Sebring 1960 and with whom I was supposed to co-drive Donald's Le Mans Falcon Sprite later that year. We had some great "do you remembers" and it seemed that we had raced just a few seasons ago, and not 48 years back. Another superb presentation was by Ray Stone, who would not be known to UK  Sprite fans, but who had his Frog Eye from 1960 and continually raced it very successfully on the East Coast until early in the 2000's. He won several championships during the years, and was considered the "man" to beat during most of those years and all the while retaining an engine of under 1000cc, with fairly conventional bodywork and suspension. The engine modifications of which he spoke, were obviously way beyond anything from my day, and camshaft profiles to provide varied fuel spatter patterns were something that even those Speedwell genius engineers Hulbert and Jones had never even considered.

Rick Moses and Cindy worked tirelessly to keep us fully entertained for a five day meeting, with evening convoys to various all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants - Pennsylvanians certainly know how to put the grub away. I even got to show that fabulous Shell Alpine Rally film of 1958, where Sprites and Big Healeys are shown working very hard on those narrow and unsurfaced Alpine Passes.The final evening banquet had a full range of entertainment and speeches, and all in all this was a great way to celebrate half a century of Sprites in the USA. Now it is on to San Diego for the Austin Healey Clubs Annual Conclave where Gerry Coker and I will be giving Spritely views to the mostly "3000" enthusiasts, and then the Sydney and Melbourne clubs will get a chance to see the Shell Alpine film and to ask the usual questions about Bug Eyes that were also assembled "down under" .

Take care and ALOHA, John