“Why do you bother doing sketches of alternate reality cars when AI can do it for you?” That’s really a question I should ask myself more often. Indeed, pretty much any of the “what-ifs” that I draw up could ostensibly be done by Midjourney or some similar program. Still, there are many issues. Namely, I’d need to type in a few dozen paragraphs of prompts and do hours of trial and error to even attempt to get details like the side marker lights and hazard flasher switch exactly where I want them. Tedious as that sounds, I’m assuming it could eventually work, but what about emotion? Autopians know that cars are about far more than what they look and how they function: how do they make you feel?
I haven’t tried putting the term “fun car” into any one of these generators, yet I can see it struggling. There’s no universally agreed-upon formula for what a “fun” car should be even amongst the most “normal” car enthusiasts, and the precise shape of fun grows all the more soft and fuzzy when the tastes of Autopians are brought into consideration. An old Jeep? A VW Bug? A Yugo? These unlikely things give endless joy to their owners, though I’m sure AI would sooner generate a sub-5-second-to-sixty SUV as a “fun” car instead. Believe me- I purchased a well-worn example of one of those and it just plain isn’t “fun”.
It’s been said that driving a slow car fast is far more entertaining than driving a fast car slowly. In the Malaise era, we learned this rather quickly because we just didn’t have access to truly fast cars in the first place. What if it’s 1984, and we want to make the “highest fun factor” car we can possibly imagine? The results of the Bishop-O-Tron generator would likely defy the results of any computer algorithm, but I think you’ll agree that this concoction of Eastern and Western expertise would have been an absolute hoot.
Is It A “Frogeye” Or A “Bugeye”?
It’s a Sunday morning, and you’re driving down a suburban four-lane at what feels like breakneck speed. The wind from the open top is whipping over your head, the motor throbbing along in top gear. As you switch lanes the steering is nearly telepathic-quick as you sit inches from the ground. Suddenly a car drifts past you on the left, moving ahead of you as they speed around in the outside lane. Who dares pass when we’re already going what feels like Mach I?
It’s a landau-roofed Mercury Grand Marquis; the elderly passengers are likely late for church, and they’re still only going a few miles an hour over the speed limit.
I experienced the above in a friend’s 1960 Austin Healey “Bugeye” Sprite (known as a “Frogeye” in most UK circles). This painfully low-powered sports car was nonetheless likely one of the most fun automobiles that I’ve ever driven, and it’s a car that’s fun before you even get behind the wheel. Only the 1950’s British automobile industry would design a car with pop-up headlights, realize it was too expensive to build, and then just leave the raised headlights in place despite the frog-faced appearance of the finished car. A trunk lid? Outside door handles? Side windows? Interior door panels? Not even available as options. It’s hard to believe that people bought this thing, but buy they did, even though it was the era of practically-free gasoline and big V8s in family cars.
The “Bugeye” was a rather odd car to come from Donald Healey, a former race driver and previous technical director at Triumph cars. His own automobile firm that he started later was primarily known for building larger, more powerful and far more costly sports machines (if you’re a GenXer, the Tears For Fears video that played every ten minutes on MTV is practically a love letter to a rather lovely BRG straight six Big Healey). Well before the time of the Sprite’s 1958 introduction, demand for Healeys was beyond Donald’s production capabilities, requiring him to use British Motor Corporation (predecessor of the dreaded British Leyland) for production of these “Austin-Healey” cars. Unlike the near-Jag-priced “big” Austin-Healeys, the inexpensive Sprite made the sports car experience accessible to virtually everyone.
The second-generation Sprite was basically a twin of the MG Midget. Standard were far more creature comforts (wind-up windows!) but far less personality than the “bugeye” predecessor. The first generation car far better captured the minimal ethos so loved by enthusiasts.
Healey’s contract with BMC ended in 1967, but that wasn’t the end of his ventures. In 1970, American car dealer Kjell Qvale became majority shareholder of the Jensen Motor Company, maker then of the Chrysler V8-powered Interceptors. Kjell lamented the loss of the large Austin-Healey and hired Donald as chairman with the main purpose of creating a latter-day successor to that car.
The resulting car, the Jensen-Healey, was absolutely one of those things that sound great on paper: a Lotus motor, Healey-developed chassis, and styling tweaked by William Towns. In reality, everything turned out to be far less than promised. Lotus indeed provided the motor, but it was the “torqueless wonder” 907 DOHC 4 cylinder that proved troublesome. Styling was pleasant enough, but not nearly exciting enough to make one see it as a “next generation” Big Healey, even before big black rubber US bumpers had to be added. There’s only so much one could have done with the Vauxhall mechanical components used, and definitely not enough to make a pure sports car. What really cursed any hope of lasting success that the Jensen-Healey project hoped to have in a market were quality issues that were bad even by labor-strike-plagued standards of the day. Buyers had historically accepted the quirks of these cars since there was nothing quite like them, but by the 1970s, alternative choices like that pesky 240Z changed people’s tolerance levels and put paid to sales of British cars in general.
Healey cut ties with Jensen in 1973, possibly to distance himself from the less-than-stellar reboot of his name. Issues with the Jensen-Healey and poor sales of the 9MPG Interceptors after the energy crisis forced that firm into liquidation by 1976.
Reportedly, companies such as Ford and even Saab had courted Donald Healey to add some sports car magic to their lineups, but it was not to be. That’s quite a shame, and I can see an alternative reality where such a revival might have resulted in a quality car that was more fun than any malaise car had a right to be.
We Could At Least Offer British Electrical Smoke Air Fresheners
It’s the early eighties, and we’d like to bring out the Healey name one more time; not as something to be put on a “large” touring car but instead for an affordable pure sports car in the vein of the Sprite. What company can we choose to partner with to make a reliable, well-built machine with a high-revving little engine and responsive mechanicals? Well, there are a few we can think of that … oh, come on, who are we kidding? You said “Honda” right away, didn’t you? What other choice would there be?
People often point to the VW Golf as the epitome of cheap thrills in the early eighties, which ignores the merits of the Civic. The magnum opus of the Honda’s subcompact likely was the sporting CRX version, sold only as a two-seater in the US and a machine that jammed in more pure driving fun-per-horsepower than anyone thought possible. These guys earned a car with the Healey badge, dammit.
Don’t forget, British Leyland built a version of the Honda Civic themselves at the Triumph Acclaim in the early eighties, so it’s not as odd of a mashup as one might think. There’s only one possible challenge: we want this Healey to be a traditional front engine-rear drive car, something that at this point Honda hadn’t made for some time. In fact, the last example of a model that they made with this layout was a decade before with the tiny S800 roadster.
Yet why couldn’t Honda make such a car? A few years later they’d make the mid-engined little Beat roadster, and before that there was the vaunted NSX; a proto-supercar favored by a dude that drove Honda-powered Formula 1 race cars.
Some products require a tremendous amount of hand-wringing to bring to life, while others tend to design themselves. This “ultimate fun” car seems to be the latter. What if we start by imagining how Honda might make a test mule for such a thing?
First, they’d take a CRX and stretch the nose a bit; that’s about the perfect size for this car since it’s a tad smaller than a Miata, much smaller than an S2000, and just enough larger than a Kei car for Uncle Sam to allow it into the country (let’s face it, even today such tiny cars are less welcome by most American states than sex offenders). The Honda engineers would turn the E-Series Honda motor longitudinally; that engine bay would be just waiting for the later twin-cam D-Series motors in subsequent years, but again this exercise is far more than about pure power. Supposedly Mazda engineers worked tirelessly to make the Miata exhaust sound like a British sports car, but we won’t do that here; the sound of a Honda four at full song is honest and just as inspiring.
The next thing would be figuring out how to get the five-speed of a formerly front-driven car to work now (or does the transaxle go in back?). Ideally, Lotus could have helped design a new independent rear suspension to connect our driveshaft to, but Honda was more than capable to doing this themselves. Besides, after selling Jensen thousands of bad engines without any form of warranty (Colin Chapman was a great salesman) I doubt that Donald Healey would darken their door again. Keep the CRX front suspension essentially the same, add disc brakes to each wheel and that’s the basic car: no more and no less than what we need.
Styling is essentially the same thing in terms of developing quite easily. Like the original Sprite, it’s very elemental and clean. We’d eschew pop-up lights here for cost and weight savings reasons which also gives us a Frog-like front end similar to our inspiration car. As with the first Sprite, the look comes from the need for simplicity and not an overly self-conscious attempt at being “cute”. The “smiling” Healey grille fits nicely into the US-spec bumpers.
Simulated Minlite wheels would be a slick option, though chrome-capped steelies would be standard.
I can’t resist getting a little cute in back with a very unlikely-for-the-time abundance of gently sloping sheet metal to match the OG Sprite. The faired-in taillamps are inspired by the ones on Austin-Healeys both big and small.
The interior of the original Sprite was exactly what you would expect for such an elemental machine. A tach and speedometer sit in front of the driver, with secondary gauges and the few controls scattered across the vinyl-wrapped steel pan. I like the odd ignition switch surrounded by the headlamps knob in the center of the dash. I am guessing “W” means “wipers” and “H” is heat because there just flat out ain’t much else on the car to be able to switch off and on. The toggle switch in the dash center for the turn signals is a nice, painfully non-ergonomic touch (likely because the steering column is so short from the tiny cabin).
Our reboot will be similar in design, albeit not in steel and with the controls for the radio and HVAC located below. The “oh shit” handle from the original Bugeye will be present, though faired into the dash. A dash-top rearview mirror will be appreciated by Jason who seems to like these things (and allow for wider sun visors).
A horizontal band at the top of the dash holds the vents and line-of-sight warning lights for the driver. I’m reluctant to offer air conditioning and power windows as options but I don’t see such extravagances as ruining the car.
If This Ain’t Fun, Then Maybe You’re The Problem
Let’s dig into your memory banks. Do you remember hopping into a go-cart as a twelve-year-old, smelling that lawn mower engine exhaust, and racing around the track at barely double-digit speeds? The way the little steering wheel in that little cart responded to your every move? That’s pure driving fun. Most of us Autopians have been chasing that feeling ever since and being disappointed when virtually every car failed to deliver on the promise to give us that experience.
Austin-Healey was able to nearly match that feeling in an affordable, real car with 43 horsepower. Some mistakenly think that a 1000 horsepower car will be the answer; often it’s the same people that say “My Altima can beat an old Ferrari to sixty.” Such an attitude typically results in diminishing returns in the fun factor, even if most won’t admit it when the truth becomes clear.
Donald Healey died in 1988, shortly before the launch of the Mazda Miata. It’s too bad that he wasn’t able to have one more shot at finally having a car with his name attached to it that was as reliable as it was nimble; it’s a shame for all of us.
How Beautiful Sketches Become Ugly Cars: A Redemption Of Triumph Designer Harris Mann – The Autopian
A Daydreaming Designer Imagines If MG Kept Making Sports Cars In The Eighties – The Autopian
This Is What A Lotus 4-Door Sedan From 1987 Could Have Looked Like – The Autopian
The original Sprite’s style was special in a way that can hardly be captured again. The styling cues in this exercise simply show how trying to capture a style without the substance just isn’t going to work.
I would argue that the closest successor to the original Sprite would be something like the Honda Beat or Suzuki Cappuccino.
Because large language models only create the most genericized amalgamations of things even if you’re being specific. AI could never come up with something like Rad Dog Surf, Ren & Stimpy, pointilism, or punk rock because it’s only capable of taking the broadest surface and recreating it. It can’t find specific elements and separate then expand on them. The more I’ve learned about LLMs the more I realize that they’re exactly what corpo types want: The same thing repackaged and deployed as quickly as you can think of another avenue to market it under.
I just saw a post the other day regarding “AI Art”. There has been so much of an explosion of “AI Art” that the AI models are now starting to train off of those… which is leading to a whole bunch of even crappier and mangled “AI Art”
The serpent consumes it’s own tail. This was something computer scientists predicted would happen back in 2021, and yet nobody paid attention to them.
As an aside, if you can try to get people to stop saying “AI art.” Getting them to say “machine generated images” or “machine learning imagery” is more accurate. These images aren’t art, after all.Since the language we use to describe things influences our perception of those things refusing to call it “art” is important.
Good to note regarding the “machine learning imagery”. Vernacular updated.
I never liked the 80’s design fad for all angles/no curves, so this doesn’t really do it for me.
That said, the Sprite is my favourite car, so I’m always happy to see one 🙂
You could have just put up a picture of a first-gen Miata and been done. Instead you put up what really resembled an Autozam AZ-1. I mean, look at it, look at an AZ-1, and tell me that comparison is wrong.
This would’ve been the Miata before the Miata.
I do think what would’ve happened is that rather than arranging a front engine/RWD setup that Honda didn’t already have in the parts bin, they’d have gone mid-engine. That and likely scotched the CRX since it would be slicing the 2-seater market a little too fine; anyone wanting a tintop would be steered to a 5-seat Civic 1500S or later Si.
Kids these days, I swear. “Why don’t you use AI?” Well kiddos, we are old enough to remember James Cameron’s warning on the dangers of AI, that’s why.
What other choice would there be?
Mazda. The MX5 is as strong front engine, RWD resume as a British sports car manufacturer could hope for, the development of which began in the early 1980s:
In 1976, Bob Hall, a journalist at Motor Trend magazine who was an expert in Japanese cars and fluent in the language, met Kenichi Yamamoto and Gai Arai, head of Research and Development at Mazda. Yamamoto and Gai Arai asked Hall what kind of car Mazda should make in the future:
I babbled […] how the […] simple, bugs-in-the-teeth, wind-in-the-hair, classically-British sports car doesn’t exist any more. I told Mr. Yamamoto that somebody should build one […] inexpensive roadster.[9]
In 1981, Hall moved to a product planning position with Mazda USA and again met Yamamoto, now chairman of Mazda Motors, who remembered their conversation about a roadster and in 1982 gave Hall the go-ahead to research the idea further.[8] At this time Hall hired designer Mark Jordan to join the newly formed Mazda design studio in Southern California. There, Hall and Jordan collaborated on the parameters of the initial image, proportion and visualization of the “light-weight sports” concept. In 1983, the idea turned concept was approved under the “Offline 55” program, an internal Mazda initiative that sought to change the way new models were developed. Thus, under head of project Masakatsu, the concept development was turned into a competition between the Mazda design teams in Tokyo and California.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-5
Definitely Mazda.
Or Autozam
(Also Mazda)
Great job on this as always Bishop. I enjoy all of these what if cars you create and enjoy all of the little details you add. Put my name on the wish list for this little roadster.
AI might have a chance in a thousand of matching your exterior designs but there is no way on God’s green earth that AI could match up to the amazing interior designs you do. Seriously!
As a huge fan of peak era Honda I’d be all over this little beastie. Honda really understood how to make a simple car a lot of fun to drive while still keeping it reliable.
Thank you! I really enjoy doing those probably more than the outsides and I’m glad people actually appreciate the silly detailing.
I/We do really appreciate your conceptual work and (backstory) description.
Thank You!
I daily drove a Bugeye for a while Its engine and transmission were “fragile.” A Bugeye with a high revving Honda engine and a smooth shifting Honda transmission would have been out of sight.
I also had a !968 Ford Cortina GT and later read about some conversions with that engine and transmission put into Bugeyes that seemed like a match made in heaven.
I assume that using these “powerful” engines would have required a car that had a stronger structure than the Bugeye, but one can dream.
I skipped the Mk II Sprite and “moved up” to a Mk III. IIRC, the Mk II still had side curtains.
I thought the Reliant Scimitar SS1 was the revival of the Bugeye…
That’s exactly what I saw here too.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Reliant_Scimitar_SS1_registered_October_1993_1392cc.jpg/1024px-Reliant_Scimitar_SS1_registered_October_1993_1392cc.jpg
I think the Healey in the Tears For Fears video is a replica – there were at least a couple available in the 80s. Wheel offsets and width are way off of a stock Healey. Probably has a 302 and a Mustang II front end.
The most popular replica was the Saxon, but it’s pretty instantly recognizable as a fake. Some chat on the Healey site about the location of the car today and nobody seems to know, yet if it were a fake I would think the anoraks on the site that know everything about the Big Healey would call it.
True, the Saxon cars are presumably the ones with the big flares that are really obvious. But I’ve seen fakes that look very very good, with stock body profiles.
My friend has a lovely (and lively) 1275cc Bugeye. We won a rally together (tie goes to oldest car!) and it was a blast. I would absolutely have purchased that Honda-Healey.
Yes, the one that mentioned in the post owned by my friend had a 1275 installed, so admittedly I haven’t experienced a ‘real’ one with the very limited power of the stock 948.
The 948 in race trim at 14-15:1 Compression can make 105hp (SCCA H-Prod and Vintage Racing) with low weight ~1200lbs. Many Bugeyes have moved to the 1275 A series engine as it is a direct bolt in and Datsun 5 speed transmission can replace the std 4 speed for road cars to get better than 1:1 ratio.
the Bugeyed Sprite was the purest of all sports cars – it had everything you needed and absolutely nothing more – just a purist’s driving machine
Well, it had doors and a windshield which aren’t absolutely necessary. Although, as I recall, the windshield was easily removable. At least on the doors, they didn’t have any frilly luxuries like interior or exterior door handles. You just reach inside and grab a cord tied to the latch mechanism and open.
For a moment, you could buy a (possibly factory authorized) CRX roadster. It was built by Straman.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/htup-0805-1985-straman-convertible-honda-crx/
Anyway, it gets you 80% of the way to this car for a whole lot less in design and development money.
I’m not up on JDM bubble era terminology, is “cliemate control” a portmanteau of client and mating?
It’s like how GM spells “gauges” as “gages”. Brand-specific misspelling
See, it’s just this kind of attention to detail that makes your articles such a pleasure to read.
It’s Saxon vs Norman – the cow vs beef thing.
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/why-does-usgs-use-spelling-gage-instead-gauge
Damn Frenchies – I fart in your general direction !
You can’t spell fail without AI. That’s why I’m thankful the Bishop – a human, I think – is willing and able to indulge these flights of fancy and fun. The world needs your Sprite, though I think you forgot the limon, and as we all know, limon is the secret to Sprite.
I had a mk1 CRX 16i16. I loved that car. Great bonnet bulge (I don’t know how to translate that in to American, sorry) to clear the cam drive for the twin cam engine. Hilarious “emergency” back seats. I loved that all I could see out of the rear view mirror was the standard ducktail spoiler.
I replaced it with a couple of mk2s that were better but less charming, then Honda brought out the Del Sol and I never bought another Honda again. I think it’s because I don’t enjoy convertibles (and couldn’t afford an NSX). I’d put up with a cloth roof for a RWD CRX though.
An ex of mine had a load of drawings of the Healy 3000 in her parents’ loft. Apparently her grandfather designed it. I hope the drawings found a better home.
If that’s true, her grandpa was Gerry Coker, who later worked at Ford and- as God is my witness – designed the two-way “Magic” tailgate.
I don’t know if it’s true, none of them seemed to care enough about cars to have lied about it.
Dunno whether they meant “designed” in the styling or engineering sense though.
I never got to see the drawings, but I did get some French poetry read at me, which I entirely failed to appreciate. That relationship was doomed.
What a world it would have been.
Pretty, but given the state of Honda at the time, I think something mid-engined along the lines of the later MGF would make more sense.
Like an MGF but not terrible?
Or a bigger Honda Beat.
From an automotive engineering viewpoint moving a FWD transverse powertrain to power the rear wheels is easier than rotating the engine through 90 degrees to make it longitudinal (with a new block casting and FEAD to suit the mounts?) and then finding a longitudinal gearbox and a diff.
Yep exactly, a US-legal Honda Beat, essentially.
Also, back in these days Honda 4-cylinders spun the opposite direction of most makers’ engines, so sourcing the drivetrain for front engine, rear drive components would be difficult.
I’d forgotten I knew that!
I’d love to know why they decided everyone else was wrong. They must have had a damn good reason.
Probably the Honda engineers were used to designing counterclockwises spinning motorcycle engines and didn’t even think about it.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Remember looking at a used Ford EXP when shopping for my first car (circa 1992). Frog headlights!
Seeing “Buggin’ Out” in the lead image made me think of this scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCrcYrgaunM
Also I’ll take 2 Honda Healey’s please and thank you
“I need 20 “D” cells, motherfu..”
I really like that boxy shape you gave to the headlight “tunnels” to fit the lights. Definitely more of a pain to keep clean, but I like it.
Round just didn’t look right with the angular styling, and going more rounded on the car itself as a whole didn’t look 1984.
“Only the 1950’s British automobile industry would design a car with pop-up headlights, realize it was too expensive to build, and then just leave the raised headlights in place despite the frog-faced appearance of the finished car.”
Is this for real? If so, wow. I have never heard it, but it makes SO MUCH sense.
Also, it’s gotta have AC, at least as an option. And I read somewhere that power windows are actually lighter than manual crank windows, so those should be available, too.
But no automatic transmission…
I’ve seen that story from enough reputable sources that I believe it to be true. Also, I’ve seen a few with the headlights removed and it just lacks all personality.
I did have AC in this remake (see the AC button on the CRX climate controls, that I misspelled) and the interior I’ve drawn does have power windows. You know they’d offer automatic but hopefully would charge so much that it would deter buyers.
Some power windows are lighter than some manual windows. But then some manual windows are lighter than electric ones. It depends on the mechanism and how important weight was to the design team (probably not much at the manual window end of the market).
Then there’s the extremely light manual windows on the Lancia Stratos, you can’t get close to that with a motor.
The Mk1 Sprite had no side windows, the lightest possible option!
And the convertible top (hood) is like pitching a tent.
Shut up and take my money.
I want it too.
Of course your friendly local Honda dealer would have only been too glad to sell you one with a mandatory $1500 markup…
that’s about right. $1500 is around $4500 in today’s money and that’s easily what they’d do on a car like this. Hell, back then they could put such spiffs of base model Civics and get it.
When shopping for a new car back in the late 80s – that’s about what Honda dealers were charging as a markup on most models.
You could not get any new Honda at MSRP. You paid the markup, or you went over to another brand. There was no bargaining at all.
Most Japanese brands would negotiate on certain models but not others.
But if you wanted a deal and flexible financing on a Japanese car – you went to a captive import from Chrysler, Ford or GM.
That’s how I wound up w/ a new Mercury Tracer (nee Ford Laser/ Mazda 323)