Austin Healey Mk I (Bugeye) Sprite). Circa 1963, my best friend and I went with our Dads to an auto show in Washington, D.C. Of all the cars there, the one that caught my was a Bugeye painted in International Harvester red into which a hod-rodded Mercury flathead V8 had been shoehorned. Its was a crazy and impractical beast that was probably the product of a fevered mind, but I loved it.

About two years later, I upgraded my 36 HP VW Beetle to a used 43(?) HP Bugeye. It was slow, impractical, unreliable, and considered by many to be a sign of social deviancy, but I more fun than the law allowed.

There is a great deal of truth to the “It is more fun to drive a slow car fast than to drive a fast car slow” adage. Neither of these cars could reach 60 mph in less than 20 seconds, but every time I drove them on a good road, I felt like Phil Hill winning at Spa in 1961.