Keith Turk wrote:
> Yes a good freind of mine took his Bugeye race car to Lake
> Gairdner back in 2002... he ran something like 220mph with
> it.... keep in mind it looks like my race car with a bugeye
> body on the back.... Actually ....Doug Odom and Gail
> Phillips drove the car and both got into the 200mph club down
> there....
I do believe that is MY car you are talking about. And I have the pink
slip to prove it!!!!
Years ago, back in the early 1980's, when it difficult to find Bugeye
parts, I bought an early 1958 Sprite with VIN No. AN5L762. It was a
non-runner, but that was fine because it was to be simply a parts car I
later sent the VIN to Anders Ditlev Clausager, and learned that it was
built on April 22, 1958 . That meant that it was built even before the
May 1958 public launch of the new Austin-Healey Sprite, and was the
261st off the assembly line.
Fast forward about 17 years and the bureaucrats of the City of Anaheim
said I could not park it, even under cover, on the garage apron in the
alley behind our house. (Yes, it was THAT Sprite.) So, my son and I
cannibalized it, keeping all of the parts from tub to bonnet to nuts and
bolts.
Fast forward again, and I put a note on the internet Sprite groups
asking if anyone could use the tub. I later got an e-mail from someone
down in Alabama, I believe, saying that a friend in California going for
a land speed record down in Australia, but had totaled his Sprite in a
practice run on a California dry lake. Could he, I was asked, get the
tub? Sure, why not.
In a phone call from Doug Odom, he told me he had to have a car on the
ship to Australia in six weeks, and was desparate. He came down from
Modesto a few days later, and we loaded the tub on it.
I never heard from him again, but did read that the car--MY car--did
220.237 mph, and Gail Phillips 205.538 mph in MY car.
Now, since I still have the pink slip, I think I can legitmately claim
bragging rights to "owning" the fastest Sprite in the world!
See: http://www.dlra.org.au/profiles/255.htm
Buster Evans
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