The Sprite model is as close to the original object of my search as any here: the year and colors are correct, and it's 1:43. Once I had learned the catalog number of the model I wanted, and seen it in an eBay auction, I thought I was all set. Problem: I won the auction but the seller didn't respond for a week. During that time I found another example, less money, from a responsible seller I had already had satisfactory deals with. First seller lost, second sold me this one and had it in my hands in three days.

There are no photos of the actual Sprite I owned. If there are, I haven't seen them. By the time I traded it on the next car (I'm not certain which, probably the Morris 1000 Traveller), I had cut holes in the grill and mounted driving lights there.

I was always somewhat apprehensive driving it. As with most of the cars I acquired, I found a way to customize the driving position so the seat bottom supported the backs of my legs. That made an important difference in comfort and performance, particularly in longer trips. The change usually involved raising the front of the seat by inserting spacers between the mounts and the floor and putting it back together with longer bolts.

In the Sprite's case, that worked fine, but it moved the top of the seat back to where the back of my neck was a jacket's thickness from the front of the Sprite's deck where it ended at the rear of the cockpit. No headrests, and a guaranteed broken neck, if not decapitation, if I was ever rear-ended.

This was another fine little vehicle, enjoyable in many dimensions, and a fount of adventures and stories. On the day Margarita had permission to come across for the first time as part of the in-migration process we three piled in it and headed for the border. I was directed to park on the USA side and while the Migra checked Margarita's documents I carried Geneva into the foot-crossing area. At one of the stations, I handed her birth certificate to an Immigration officer. He looked it over pretty carefully, checked my two forms of ID, and stamped in the margin: "ADMITTED (date) U.S. CITIZEN." Geneva was certified.

First thing we did after leaving the border was drive through Jack-In-The-Box. Margarita eventually confessed she thought she had hooked up with a real nut-case when I started talking to the clown head.

The border-crossing permission was for 24 hours so she could go to the Mexican Consulate in San Diego, file her documents there and obtain her Mexican passport. It took surprisingly little time to accomplish that mission, so I risked losing the whole thing by heading off to San Bernardino, to visit my family. This was before there was a check-point in the pass above Temecula, so the principal risk was in not signing Margarita out of the USA before the end of the 24 hours.

As we crested the hill above the San Luis Rey river, I smelled gasoline fumes, pulled into a wide spot off the road, and lifted the bonnet. It didn't take long to find the source: the brass fitting at the top of a carburetter float bowl had vibrated loose and fallen off. The top of the bowl was free to bounce around and the end of its section of fuel line was free to deliver gasoline to wherever it happened to be pointing. Not only was that not an efficient way to make an engine run, it was dangerous.

Now here's the good news: I had the parts necessary to put it back together just right. Not only did I have the parts. I had them there, in a toolbox, in the luggage cavern of the Sprite. They were leftovers from converting the MG TD from dual SUs to a Judson supercharger. Luckily, and I mean BLIND luckily, the washers and brass-nut fitting had found their way into that toolbox. I may have had unconscious prognostication working for me; it sure wasn't careful planning that rescued us.

The remainder of that trip was uneventful in a positive way: we visited for a few hours (I have pictures, and a story about snail food) and returned to Mexico with no problems.

The next excitement centered around this car was the day I awakened to find Margarita, Geneva and the Sprite absent. I was working night shift and sleeping from 7:30 AM to about 4:00 PM. Woke up and looked for Margarita and Geneva, to no avail. Wandered outside and saw the Sprite was not where I had backed it in next to the house.

Waited an hour or two. No joy.

I went out and headed up the road toward a local store, where I expected to call police and report a stolen car. I had made three steps when a neighbor friend of Margarita's hollered out a window, asking where I was going. "To report a stolen car," said I.

"Uh, it's not actually stolen. Margarita went to visit Chiquis." Chiquis was a friend who lived several kilometers away. Not just far away, but on the other side of the center of Tijuana. Tijuana, owner of some of the craziest bus-and car-drivers in the world, and of the most pot-holed roads imaginable. Oh. She drove to see Chiquis, with Geneva in the car, with the top down.

The excitement, aside from her having left a message that was apparently designed to be delivered only if I started to walk somewhere, was because MARGARITA HAD NEVER DRIVEN BEFORE.

Never. Ever.

All her driving experience was as a spectator. And now she was out there in that tiny car, agressively vulnerable in a hostile, nay, predatory motoring environment. Was I afraid for them? Yes. Was I angry? You can imagine. Was I relieved when they rolled in a couple of hours later, persons and car whole and unmarked? Yes. Did I show improbable restraint? Yes. I still congratulate myself on the calmness of my response: I told her she couldn't drive for five years.

Some time later—months later, I believe—when we could talk about it, she told some of her experiences traversing Tijuana. It seemed the engine died every time she had to stop. She'd wait until the light changed or traffic permitted, and hit the starter and continue. On the way home, after countless such stops, the battery was run down and wouldn't crank the motor. Fortunately there was a friendly gentleman who would push her out of the way, or maybe enough to give it a bump start.

He pushed and it was very hard going for a little car. "Put in the clutch," he rightly diagnosed.

"Clutch?" she queried.

Right. She had not been able, from her spectator's seat, to see or divine the use of the left pedal. The brake and gas pedals fell readily to foot, but the left one didn't exist. She had managed to go from one end of Tijuana to the other, and almost all the way back, without the use of a clutch. Remarkable.

Don had the Sprite in San Bernardino for a while, during the time we were searching for a good car for him (we settled on a '56 MG A about the color of this page; another story). He was always an aggressive driver, and ran the tread off the front tires on whatever he was driving at the moment. When it happened to the Sprite, Dad bought a couple new tires for it. They were the first Japanese tires I remember seeing. I don't recall the brand, but they seemed to work OK until I moved them to the rear. Then the car would just barely track down the road, bouncing and shifting side to side. I put them back on the front and traded the car.

The intrepid Margarita came to me roughly five years later and said her sentence was up, could she learn to drive, now. Yes, she could, and did.