Lot 021: Austin-Healey Frogeye Sprite

The second of the Frogeye Sprites in our sale today, XOX 948 was first registered in March 1959. The current vendor originally bought the car from its first owner in January 1963 and kept it for three-and-a-half years before selling it to buy a Lotus Elite (which he still owns to this day). However, fond memories of the Frogeye always remained and, in 1993, he managed to track the car down again and buy it back. By this time it had gone through another four owners, had been repainted red and was in a rather neglected state. Determined to get the car back to how he remembered it in his youth, the owner then embarked on a total nut-and-bolt rebuild which was to take four years and some �14,000 to complete. Every single part of the car has been renewed or repaired as necessary and it is now said to be in superb condition throughout, the only non-standard part being the fitment of servo assisted brakes  his daughter finding the original pedal too heavy. Since being put back on the road in 1997 the car has only covered a few hundred miles and has always been stored in a heated garage. It comes with a full set of weather gear including hood, side-screens and tonneau cover, a quantity of bills for the restoration works and is taxed and MOTd until May 2010. It is now only reluctantly being sold due to lack of use, the fact that the owner's children do not share his enthusiasm for the car, and because the Lotus is now crying out for a restoration of its own. One to buy now before he changes his mind yet again!