First Drive: This Restomod Tribute to the ‘Sebring Sprite' Demands Your Best Behind the Wheel

Yahoo

27-02-2025

In 1959, the U.S. car market reached peak tail fin. That year's Cadillac Eldorado took jet-age styling to the extreme, with rear fenders like fuselages, chrome bumpers sculpted into afterburners, and razor-sharp fins topped by dual-bullet taillights. It remains a glorious monument to automotive excess.
Also in 1959, an odd-looking British import landed on stateside shores. It was over seven feet shorter and two feet narrower than the Series 62 Caddy—and scarcely more than a quarter of its weight. You'd find no fins on its pert posterior, but its upright headlamps did look distinctive. In fact, they earned the car its nickname of Bugeye.
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A tiny roadster offering driving thrills and absolutely no frills, the Austin-Healey 'Bugeye' Sprite was, in many ways, the antithesis of America's exalted land yachts. Yet its low price ($1,795 at launch) and simple, easy-to-fix mechanicals soon found it a loyal U.S. following, especially in the amateur motorsport scene. A stock Sprite's 948 cc engine mustered just 43 hp and 52 ft lbs of torque. That mill enabled the model to cover zero to 60 mph in 20.5 seconds and reach a top speed of 93 mph, but that was nothing a little bolt-on tuning couldn't fix.
Austin-Healey was quick to capitalize on the Sprite's sporting success. 'If he drives a Sprite, he's a bachelor, or else he's married and wants a second car he can race,' declared a period print ad. A factory-backed team achieved a 1-2-3 finish at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1959, followed by a class win for Stirling Moss a year later. Even Hollywood legend Steve McQueen raced a Sprite, finishing ninth at Sebring in 1962.
Those giant-killing 'Sebring Sprites' were developed by Geoff Healey, son of the marque's founder Donald, and boasted larger SU carburetors, Dunlop disk brakes, a straight-cut gearbox, and an aerodynamic hardtop roof. Original examples of the variant are extremely rare and highly collectible, but that's where Mythron Cars offers a solution. The British company has revived the Sebring Sprite for a 21st century audience.
Building his own vehicle fulfills a dream for Jez Hayter, the man behind Mythron. 'I got the car bug,' he admits. 'I was a motorcyclist until I learned to drive aged 30, then I've owned 26 cars in the two decades since. Among those were a Porsche 911 3.2 Carrera, Lancia Fulvia Rallye, BMW M2 and i8, lots of Land Rovers, and an AC Cobra replica with a 5.7-liter Chevy V-8.'
With a career that had been in advertising, Hayter changed course after buying a former Austin-Healey Sprite race car. 'Their design is simple, making it easy to understand the mechanics of the car and identify opportunities to enhance performance and handling, along with some styling improvements,' says Hayter. 'I saw the potential to refine them and create a version more suitable to modern driving. Also, I have always idolized Steve McQueen. And if a Sebring Sprite was good enough for him . . .'
Mythron's Austin-Healey restomods are based on a Sprite or earlier examples of the related MG Midget. Buyers can choose from Fast Road (FR) or Fast Road Track (FRT) specifications: the former with a synchromesh transmission, leather trim, and softer suspension, while the latter comprises a straight-cut gearbox, carbon seats, and an FIA-approved roll cage. Prices start at around $82,000 excluding a donor vehicle, which Hayter and his team can source for you. The plan is to build 16 examples of each version (The numeral 16 being Steve McQueen's race number at Sebring).
The car I'm test-driving is Mythron's FRT No. 001, the hard-worked prototype, fresh from its appearance on the Austin-Healey Club stand at the NEC Classic Car Show in Birmingham, England. 'It really struck a chord with all generations and those who weren't traditional Healey owners,' explains Hayter. 'I personally wanted to build a version of the car that the younger generation felt looked cool and would feel they could just get in and drive.'
Its Old English White paint glinting in the harsh winter sunlight, the reborn Healey looks far more purposeful than a basic Bugeye (known as the 'Frogeye' in its home country). A coupe-style bonded roof gives it the authentic profile of a 1960s sports racer, while the original's steel hood and headlamp pods make way for a one-piece fiberglass front end. All the chrome trim, including the custom Sebring badge, has been ceramic coated in matte black. Roundels on the doors, a Le Mans filler cap, and 13-inch Weller steel wheels complete the look.
Fold your limbs through the shallow door aperture and the FRT-spec Sprite has a similarly focused feel. You are locked in position by hard-shell Tillett race seats with four-point harness belts. Your feet are on the drilled pedals while hands grip a three-spoke Momo Prototipo wheel. The analog gauges are Mythron's own, including a GPS speedometer and a rev counter with LED shift lights. Ventilation is via sliding vents in the clip-on windows. As for infotainment, you don't even get a radio. I'm about to discover why.
The Sprite's four-cylinder BMC A-series engine is similar to that found in classic Minis, but a rebore to 1,380 cc, a new cylinder head, high-compression pistons, Weber DCOE 45 carburetors, and a Maniflow exhaust have upped output to between 110 hp and 120 hp. In a car weighing a fraction over 1,300 pounds, that's enough to deliver a pace comparable to that of a Porsche Cayman.
Yet with a spiky camshaft and very short gearing (70 mph corresponds to 5,500 rpm in fourth), this engine needs plenty of revs to give its best. Forget any thoughts of a gentle meander to Cars and Coffee: The Mythron demands to be driven. Its manual transmission has four ratios and a standard H-pattern gate, but the lack of synchro requires careful hand-and-foot coordination, both to keep the engine within its power band and to avoid grinding the gears.
It's seriously loud, too, the snort and blare of the four-cylinder engine soon smothered by the stark mechanical whine of meshing straight-cut cogs. In here, a radio wouldn't stand a chance. Having never driven one of Geoff Healey's fabled Sebring Sprites, I can't make a direct comparison, but the Mythron FRT feels every inch the road-legal race car.
What else? Well, it's joyously small, which matters less in the U.S., but is a real advantage on England's narrow, often overgrown country lanes. It's also agile, thanks to refurbished suspension with adjustable shock absorbers and uprated KAD front disk brakes. And it all fizzes with vibrant feedback, from the unassisted steering to the sense of throttle-adjustable balance, which tempts you to take every corner with a touch of opposite lock.
The Mythron FRT is pretty intense on the road and, in truth, my preference would be for the FR version, which seems closer in spirit to a classic British sports car, if not to the original, race-ready Sebring Sprite. As with any restomod, there is endless scope for personalization, but it comes at a lower price than any reimagined 911 or E-Type. There can be few more affordable and evocative ways to drive like Stirling Moss and look like Steve McQueen.Best of Robb Report
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