Speedwell GT

Some little time after John Sprinzel, George Hulbert and Len Adams established Speedwell Tuning Conversions, they began to develop a special-bodied version of the Sprite to be known as the Speedwell GT. John takes up the story (reproduced from his article in Mascot, March 2009) :

"With business continuing to grow, we hatched the idea of getting a special body for the Sprite, which - back in those days - received a great deal of scorn for those ridiculous headlamps. Even Gerry Coker, who had designed the Sprite with retractable lights, refused to take any credit back then, although he nowadays jokes that as the "Frogeyes" have become so popular, he is happy to do so today. Graham's [Hill] presence caused Mike Costin to drop in most mornings to our works in the Finchley Road with the prototype Elite that Lotus were about to release, and that is how we got to know his half-brother Frank, who was a serious aerodynamicist with many race car shapes for Lotus, Vanwall and others to his credit. Frank first designed a new streamlined front with a small Jaguar-like air intake, and Stuart Turner and I debuted this on the Liege-Rome-Liege four day and night road race, with a Class win, so obviously the airflow improvements were working.

We then asked Frank to do his magic on a fixed top and after one not so attractive effort the Speedwell GT was born. The first Sprite to receive this full treatment was my hard-worked Abingdon car, which had completed two seasons of racing, rallying and demonstrating, winning both the RAC and BTRA Rally Championships for 1959. One of the perks of this win was for the car to be lined up with all the other Championship cars at the Racing Car Show, and being placed alongside the Formula One winner, made sure we got plenty of coverage. We had also begun to build a steramliner to tackle one litre records, and eventually Graham managed to top 130 mph in officially timed runs on the famous Jabekke Highway in Belgium. By this time I had left Speedwell as the firm seemed to be more interested in selling packaged 'goodies' than preparing cars for individals, which was really my preferred idea.I sold my share to Graham Hill, and then joined the Donald Healey Motor Co to set up a Special Tuning division in their Grosvenor Street premises".