With its cartoonish ‘Frogeye’ face, Lilliputian dimensions and 43hp engine, the Austin-Healey Sprite wasn’t the obvious starting point for a giant-killing race car. Yet this plucky roadster punched well above its sub-600kg weight, achieving a 1-2-3 finish at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1959, then a class win for Stirling Moss a year later.   

Works ‘Sebring Sprites’ were raced throughout the early 1960s by the likes of Bruce McLaren, Briggs Cunningham, Innes Ireland and Steve McQueen. Today, the original cars are vanishingly rare, but one British company has created a 21st century tribute.

Meet the Mythron Cars Healey: a ‘reimagined’ Sebring Sprite, made in West Sussex and priced from £65,000 including a donor car. Excitingly, I would be the first journalist in the world to drive it. 

A brilliantly simple sports car

Launched in 1958, the Austin-Healey Sprite was marketed as an affordable roadster that ‘a chap could keep in his bike shed’. With a rudimentary fabric roof, clip-on windows, no exterior door handles and a boot only accessible from inside the cabin, it was brilliantly simple and simply brilliant. 

The Sprite was the first sports car with a stressed, unitary body, rather than a separate chassis. Its original design had exposed pop-up headlights, like those of a Porsche 928, but parent company BMC – the British Motor Corporation, which also owned Austin, Morris, MG, Riley and Wolseley – deemed they were too expensive. The fixed, upright lamps used instead gave the car its signature frog eyes. 

A print advert of the time proclaimed: ‘This sassy little brother to the Austin-Healey 100-Six sets a new high in 948cc performance… and a new low in cost!’. According to a road test in The Motor magazine, those highs were 0-60mph in 20.5 seconds and a 93mph maximum – all for a lowly £669. 

Major plans for Minor engine

Being cheap to buy and easy to fix (its BMC A-series engine was borrowed from the Austin A35 and Morris Minor), the Sprite became a popular club racer – and Austin-Healey itself soon jumped on the bandwagon. Geoff Healey, son of company founder Donald, developed a works version with larger SU carburettors, a straight-cut gearbox, Dunlop disc brakes and an aerodynamic hard-top roof. This was the now-mythical Sebring Sprite. 

Jez Hayter, the man behind Mythron Cars, came to the Sebring Sprite via his love for cars and admiration for Steve McQueen. “I was a motorcyclist until I learned to drive aged 30, then I’ve owned 26 cars in the two decades since,” he explains. “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-litre Chevy V8.” 

After a successful career in advertising – working for Saatchi & Saatchi, then running his own agency –  Jex bought a former Austin-Healey Sprite race car and decided to change course. “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. I saw the potential to refine them – and create a version more suitable to modern driving. Also, I have always idolised Steve McQueen. And if a Sebring Sprite was good enough for him…” 

Fast Road Track specification

Fast forward just four months and Mythron Cars #001 (pictured here) made its debut on the Austin Healey Club stand at the NEC Classic Car Show in Birmingham. “It really struck a chord with all generations and those who weren’t traditional Healey owners,” says Jez. “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.” 

My drive will take place on country roads near Goodwood, where Jez racked up many of this prototype’s development miles. Finished in a classic shade of Old English White, Mythron #001 is built to Fast Road Track (FRT) specification. This means an FIA-approved roll cage, fixed-back Tillett carbon fibre seats, four-point harness belts and a straight-cut manual transmission. 

Alternatively, buyers can also choose the Fast Road (FR) version, which has softer suspension, a leather-lined interior, conventional seatbelts and a synchromesh gearbox. Mythron plans to build 16 examples of each car, with ‘16’ being Steve McQueen’s race number at the 1962 Three Hours of Sebring.