SELLING THE SPORTS CAR FOR THE MASSES

Time to don a flat hat, blazer and your most dashing cravat as the keys to a new Austin-Healey Sprite await. Adventures, thrills and general jolliness will doubtless ensue...

These seven adverts from the first decade of the Austin-Healey Sprite combine to give a vivid impression of the tropes that were constantly employed by BMC: price; practicality; sporting prowess; sex appeal; and sheer enjoyment. The first was a key element in the original ‘Frogeye’; fresh air motoring at a cost that compared favourably to a Morris Minor 1000 – ‘for the sheer joy of driving – and being able to afford it’, as the ad chaps put it, back in 1958. This remained a theme for subsequent variants, including the MG Midget, for the next 21 years.

It was also a car that revelled in the use of familiar components and would therefore not require the attentions of a specialist engineer; the Sprite could be serviced at virtually any garage or, better still, maintained at home. This was an open two-seater that an owner would be able to keep up to scratch in his (it was most likely to be a ‘his’ at that time) lean-to garage, while out on the open road the Austin-Healey would dart past larger saloons. Some of the most effective marketing of the Sprite featured it in motion, thus reinforcing the theme of a car that simply had to be driven rather than merely employed on commuting or shopping duties.

As for the remaining theme, competition victories were an essential part of the heritage of Austin-Healey and MG, the Sprite/ Midget proving no exception to the adage ‘Win on Sunday, sell on Monday’. Two of the adverts here also illustrate the depths of sheer naffness that advertising executives were able to plumb when exploiting a motor vehicle’s supposed sex appeal, but the overriding impression is one that still holds good today – that here was a car that was as usable as it was enjoyable.