A rare find

I bought the bug eye in November 1995, a Austin Healey Sprite. I had two of these previously and my older son had one for his first car in high school, but none of them were like this one. I have had a dream about dropping a V8 into one of these for at least 30 years, now I had an opportunity to do just that

There it was in the paper, (1995, before car shopping on the internet was popular) a Bug Eye Sprite with a Chevy small block. I packed both boys in the car and drove 30 miles to look at it. It was rough, but it rekindled all of my fantasies about a V8 Bug Eye, I had to have it. The guy I bought it from didn't do anything to it, it just sat in front of his house for a year, and the guy he bought it from didn't do anything to it either. And so it goes a dream that was unfulfilled by so many but I was determined to buy it, to complete it. Someone many years earlier had started the project by modifying the basically stock chassis to accept a Chevy small block. It was far from complete, very far from complete as you can see in the picture above.

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