Although it became one of the most successful MGs of all-time, the Midget was never intended to wear the famous octagonal badge at all.
Developed through a tie-up with the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and the Healey Motor Company, the small sports car was a spin-off from the deal that brought us the “Big Healey” sports cars, with the smaller car being spun-off from the mechanical components of the Austin A35 in order to give BMC a bargain basement roadster based on a similar formula to the bigger cars.
The recipe was simple: take the engine and gearbox from the A35, add a Morris Minor steering rack and install them in a Healey-designed chassis with a simple sports body.
The result was the Frogeye Sprite, unveiled to great acclaim in 1958 and an immediate sales success, at the time the cheapest four-cylinder sports car on the market at £455. The standard car really did take the idea of basic to the limit: there wasn’t even an opening boot lid while heater, front bumper, tonneau, rev counter and even screen washer were on the options list.
The Sprite’s construction was unusual, in that it was a kind of hybrid between a body-on-chassis and monocoque bodyshell. Box structures ran from the front of the central tub with an outrigger for the front suspension and steering. Two longitudinal structures connected this to a second crossmember under the scuttle, with the sills and propshaft tunnel connecting to the rearsupporting the axle and suspension. We’ll come to this later, but it does tend to create some interesting rot-spots over six decades on!
