[Spridgets] Sebring sprite siting locally

Neil Anderson neilandcustom at gmail.com
Sat Apr 5 08:59:13 MDT 2014


Alan and all,

This sounds like one of the original Sebring Sprites that raced at Sebring
in '59, was restored by Butch Gilbert and recently sold.  See more info on
the car from the Sebring Sprite website.
http://sebringsprite.com/butchgilbert.html   The last listing when it was
for sale was for about $135K.  The webpage has specific info that may
confirm if this is the car you saw.

When the car was restored by Butch, he thought he had the #53 Sprite which
finished 36th and 2d in GT1, but further research revealed the car raced
with #54, and was the car that won the class in the '59 race.  It is the
only one of the three '59 DHMC team cars that survives pretty much as it
raced at Sebring.

I am going to forward your post to Martin Ingall, who runs the Sebring
Sprite website.  I am sure he will be interested in hearing more about the
car's current home after the recent sale.

Being such a rare and historic car, I doubt it will be vintage raced to any
great extent, but you never know, there are a lot of million $ cars out on
race tracks around the world.

Neil Anderson



On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Frog eye <frogeye at cox.net> wrote:

> I was up at a local British repair shop yesterday and was asked if I would
> be
> interested in seeing on of the original Sebring sprites
>
> After being led to a storage area I saw an iris blue RHD bugeye with the
> following
> Factory white hardtop
> 4 wheel disc brakes
> Wire wheels with 1/4 elliptical leafs
> 5" smiths racing tach
> Large number 54 in 4 places
> 948
> In my research this appears to be one of the 4 cars brought to Florida for
> Sebring
> I saw the VIN number as well and it appears to match the one mentioned in
> several sites referencing the events
> If anyone is interested in more details or may want any photos I might be
> able
> to provide those and more details about the car
> From what I saw I believe this is the read deal and surely not a clone
> Alan
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