JOHN SPRINZEL
OCTOBER 1930 – MAY 2021
We are sad to report that British race and rally driver John Sprinzel has died in Hawaii at the age of 90, after a brief illness.
John became one of the best-known drivers of his era despite never racing single-seaters, which didn’t interest him. What he really enjoyed was taking an ordinary production car – ideally small-engined with little or no sporting pretensions – modifying it within the regulations, and then driving the wheels off it in some of the world’s top-flight motorsport events. His giant-killing feats endeared him to the public, while his natural charisma, ready wit and disarmingly self-effacing manner sparkled in front of a camera.
It all started in 1955, when he saw an Autosport announcement that entries were opening for the British International Rally. First thing next morning he turned up at the RAC’s Pall Mall headquarters. Being allocated car number one meant he would be pictured in Autosport, but it also surprised his mother – finding a suitable car had been a problem as he and his friends all ran pre-war models which the RAC would not allow. A late-night phone call to his mum, however, had secured the loan of her year-old Austin A30 for what John explained was 'a touring holiday with a couple of friends in Wales and the Lake District.' Trickily, film of the start was shown on the ITV evening news, which the Sprinzel parents were watching at home...
He was soon forgiven, however. Despite the toughest of weather conditions, he had finished the event – and come 6th in a class of 20. It was all the encouragement John needed. He bought a Triumph TR2 and went rallying seriously for a season, before realising that all the other ‘likely lads’ were driving TRs. In order to get noticed, John was going to have to go for something much more unlikely. Since BMC had developed the A30 with a larger, stronger engine, John bought one of the run-out A30s that had been modified at the works to A35 specification.
Many rallies then included special tests at racing circuits, so John decided he needed race experience and he signed on for the Whit Monday Bank Holiday meeting at Goodwood in June 1957. It was a handicap race – which John duly won. John Bolster found he had a few minutes to fill for his live BBC television broadcast, so he interviewed the young driver about the 'extraordinary speed' of his Austin A35. Speedwell Performance Conversions was born in that moment, and in the hundreds of calls that poured in over the next few weeks – John had cleverly given the phone number of his father’s print works.
Over time, John took part in over 100 International competitions in more than 40 different makes of car – from an 803cc Austin A30 to a 7-litre Ford Galaxie – and was a member of 11 different Works teams. He led the trio of Austin-Healey Sprites that won their class 1-2-3 in the 1958 Coupe des Alpes, driving one registered PMO 200, a number plate that would become well-known to motorsport fans around the world. He became the British Rally Champion of 1959, mostly co-driven by future BMC and Ford Competitions Manager Stuart Turner, but John’s best individual rally results both came in 1960: third overall on the Liège-RomeLiège – the highest-placed finish by a one-litre car on this non-stop four-day road race – and second overall on the RAC Rally. In 1960, John achieved another class win at the 12 Hours of Sebring in a special-bodied works Sprite.
There were also the four books written by John, as well as countless articles for the motoring press. He was the commentator for ITV’s World of Sport rallycross coverage – starting by coining the name ‘Rallycross.’ John took his own MG Midget (registered PMO 200) on the 1968 London-Sydney Marathon – when not driving for a Works team, John was always an eager privateer. He went on to organise the 1970 World Cup Rally for the Daily Mirror, which has been described as the toughest rally of all time.
But going back to Speedwell, John had thrown all his considerable promotional ability into the company which, combined with his adept driving in both races and rallies, really caught the public’s eye. John wrote his first book, Modified Motoring: Improved Performance from a Production Car, a hot seller which went to a second edition in 1961. But towards the end of 1959, John felt the time had come for him to accept a new challenge, one which came from Donald Healey himself. He asked John to set up the Speed Equipment Division of the Donald Healey Motor Company, with the promise of Works drives in the World Sports Car Championship races, the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. John set to work with Geoffrey Healey to draw up a set of homologation papers for the Sebring Sprite, a modified version of the Healeys’ small sports car. The Sebring outing achieved its aim – a class win – but it was a hard-won success as the development Sprite burned a hole in its cylinder head and John had to push it some four miles back to the pits under the fierce Florida sun.
The hoped-for Le Mans outing sadly did not materialise for John, as he took a Sprite on the Acropolis Rally, where his youthful co-driver left the road and hit a tree at night while John was asleep. It was a bad accident, after which the car’s ‘frog eyes’ were found to be facing each other. John also broke his wrist, which prevented him driving in the great French race.
Towards the end of 1960, the rental of their London premises was proving quite a strain on the Healeys’ resources, so Donald allowed John to buy the Speed Equipment Division and to set up his own garage business in Lancaster Mews in West London. Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, ‘the Mews’ became a go-to destination for young people wanting to get into motorsport, or just get a bit more power from their road cars. John also sold new cars at his garage, gaining a Marcos dealership through which he met his life-partner Caryl, who arrived at the Mews to buy a Marcos and was captivated by John’s magnetic personality.
John had bought a string of garages between Brackley and London. In addition to an MG dealership at the Mews – which duly become the most successful in the country
– he was selling Porsches, Alfa Romeos, Jensens, Fords and Opels, powerful sports cars which overnight became unsaleable when the 1973 oil crisis hit. Selling his premises and stock at knock-down prices to his former staff, Caryl and John moved to an old windmill, which they restored, and lived The Good Life on its smallholding.
In 1979 they discovered windsurfing. Inevitably the attraction of decent weather lured them to the Mediterranean and, selling up in the UK, they started a windsurfing school on Corfu, and later another on the Turkish Aegean coast. They later moved to Hawaii, only retiring from windsurfing at the end of the 1980s and building a house in a secluded spot. John is survived by his wife and partner Caryl and a family of five nieces and nephews and seven great-nieces and nephews, to whom we send our condolences.