CLASSIC BRITS WITH REMOVABLE “HOODS” PART 1

THE TITLE “35 BRILLIANT BRITISH CLASSIC CONVERTIBLE CARS” in Classic & Sports Car online caught my eye, what with my having owned several of the breed. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits gleaned from selected examples of the brilliant 35, together with personal experiences with some and others. All quotes are from C≻ otherwise, comments are mine.

AC Ace. “The Ace was introduced in 1953 with AC’s venerable 2-litre, straight-six engine, and would later become available with Bristol’s development of the similarly sized, pre-war BMW engine and with the 2.6-litre unit used in the Ford Zephyr.”

I’ve long admired the Bristol single-camshaft, overhead-valve, hemispherical-combustion-chamber inline-six,  a sorta reparation levied on BMW and its pre-war 326. Indeed, I liked it so much that I commissioned R&T Contributing Artist /pal Leo Bestgen to illustrate it.

“Carroll Shelby liked the car but thought it would be even better with a Ford V8, an inspiration which led to the development of the Cobra.”

Austin A40 Sports. “Based on the immediately post-war A40 saloon (known as the Dorset if it had two doors or Devon if it had four), the Sports was a collaboration between industry giant Austin and the much smaller Jensen car company.”

“Production lasted only from 1950 to 1953, but 4011 examples were built in two series – a relatively trifling matter for Austin, but a big deal for Jensen.”

I admire another B-pillar-omitting saloon modification of the era, at least in part because of its name: the Hillman Minx Californian.

Hillman Minx Californian. Image by Jack Harrison in another C&SC. 

Austin-Healey Sprite. “Its prominent headlights led to it being known in the UK as the Frogeye and in North America as the Bugeye. This generation of the Sprite was produced only from 1958 to 1961, and the three which followed it over the next 10 years had a different design almost indistinguishable from that of the MG Midget.”

Kim Reynolds’ Sprite Mark I in a classic setting.

SimanaitisSays has celebrated the Sprite in its various guises: “There Were Sprites in Our Garages,” (including pal Kim Reynolds’ example shown here), and “Sprite II Outgrows Its Bugeyes—and More,” (including a Mark II restored by another R&T pal Doug Kott). Indeed, Sprites were not uncommon in our garages.

Tomorrow, we learn of Le Mans cars having to erect hoods before setting off. And introduce a car not on the C&SC list. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026