The whole experience is a great social occassion we use teamspeak so can chat freely, the competitive feel is great and at the end of say a 67 lap F1 race at Fuji there is a great feeling of satisfation at just finishing. I thought I was quick, beating the AI time and time again, since I began on line racing 5months ago I am not as quick as I thought. When you are racing the AI then yes it is easy to overtake as the AI has one line and will stick to it, you enter an online race where you are racing against say 15 other guys from around the world, then overtaking is not as easy. The realism is there, ok you dont get the sounds and you dont feel the impacts, but then again you dont get the expense of rebuilds and repairs. I now know where my friend Michael gets his grin from.I race three or four nights a week at race-connect and we use rFactor, GTR2 and Race 07. You want to be good friends or lovers if you are going to share the space in a Sprite, but one way or another you are going to have more fun than you’re going to know what to do with in a Bug Eye. After my time in “Boo,” (DiPleco says, “I just looked at her and said she’s ‘Boo’”) I know why. I always wondered why the 100-4 and the 3000 were called the “Big” Healeys. It turns where you want it to go, it’s just fast enough, it stops with no problem-and it is just SO damned cute! A highway might not be as much fun, as you are looking straight at the spinning lug nuts of 18-wheelers, but a country lane is the perfect stomping ground for a Bug Eye. With no top and side curtains you get a sense of freedom tearing down winding fall roads. You do what you have to do with a non-synchro first gear and then you are off through the others, listening to the happy growl of the little engine that could.
You also don’t have to be going fast to have a whole lot of fun in a Sprite. As he told me, “ you don’t have to be going fast to scare yourself in a Sprite.”
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The 1275-cc engine with its Weber carburetor is now putting out a “ground-pounding” 60 bhp, while an upgrade to front disc brakes keeps this British powerhouse in check.Īfter lunch on a brisk afternoon in Ulster County, Michael and I head off for a drive. In the last year, an engine and transmission swap from a 1967 model was performed. His latest creation from Abingdon has been with him for the last eight years. His second Healey was with him for roughly 30 years until the devil’s choice of a head-on collision with a pick-up truck, or a trip into a ditch-in the end, the two flipped over and ended their time together. Lured by the smiling grill of the Bug Eye, he traded a Sunbeam Alpine with a blown engine for a Healey that needed rather more work than he expected. The “Little” Healeys are still effective racers today, running in everything from the SCCA to VSCCA, all these many years after their creation.Ĭontributing photographer Michael DiPleco started his affair with Sprites back in 1972. They won their class in the 1958 Alpine Rally and showed America what they were made of by taking a class win in the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1959. Sprites were entered in rallies and races across the globe. With no door handles and a basic interior, you end up with a lightweight, simple, quick bit of kit. Powered by a 948-cc, four-cylinder engine derived from the Austin A35 and Morris Minor 1000, with larger twin 1-1/8-inch SU carburetors, it sported a front end with rack and pinion steering from that same Morris and a rear end with quarter-elliptical leaf springs and lever-arm shocks.
Any luggage or the like got pushed into the good-sized space behind the seats where the spare lived.
It was also the first mass-produced sports car to utilize unitary construction, where body panels take much of the structural stresses, as a result there was no trunk lid, as a way of bolstering structural integrity. Originally to have had retractable lights, cost cutting at BMC gave the Sprite its iconic look and name-“Frog Eye” on the right side of the pond, and “Bug Eye” on the left. The little car was designed by the Donald Healey Motor Company and was produced in Abingdon at the MG factory. The Sprite made its debut before the 1958 Monaco Grand Prix as an inexpensive motor “a chap could keep in his bike shed.”
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