Frogeye Sprite returns as 1,200bhp electric SUV

The ‘Frogeye’ Sprite, one of the more recognisable and fondly remembered sports cars to emerge from the UK, is to return to the world’s roads as a seven-seat electric SUV with up to 1,200bhp following the relaunch of Austin-Healey.

Featuring a striking and angular design made possible only by the development of a new sheet-steel pressing process known as “Parallelogramisation”, Austin-Healey spent three years just to get the Sprite through Euro NCAP’s pedestrian-impact assessments, with this  possible thanks only to the fitment of curtain airbags that extend to encompass the front wheelarches.

“We wanted to focus on all the things that made the UK so great in the original Sprite’s era”, said Curfew Witheringly, Austin-Healey’s chief assertiveness officer. “So we took inspiration from the brutalist architecture of the late 1950s, and 1960s. The original Sprite was stifled by its tiny A Series engine and archaic manufacturing processes, so we asked ourselves how it would look if it were made using bleeding-edge technology and had as much power as we could fit into it.”

The standard Sprite gets seven seats and a quad-motor, 800bhp electric powertrain, while drivers opting for the Amphetamine model get 1,200bhp thanks to eight electric motors, as well as the option of configuring a three-seater setup, with two front seats and one “Throne Room” double-armchair in the rear (the world’s first* seatbelt-certified double chair).The Throne Room option sees the entire rear cabin devoted to a single armchair that can accommodate up to two people, with this seat converting into lie-flat king-size bed, complete with bespoke silk linen ringed with solid 24-carat gold piping.

*In a vehicle costing over £100,000, EuroCarSeat 2025 awards

The Sprite’s wraparound digital dashboard comprises a dozen 18-inch screens seamlessly integrated into what its maker terms the MegaWickedScreen. This extends throughout the circumference of the cabin, taking in every exterior-facing surface including all four windows, and both the front and rear windscreens. An always-on 360-degree camera system beams realtime images of the Sprite’s surroundings onto these, with audio-visual and navigation controls shown on each screen depending on where the Sprite’s 97 eye-tracking cameras detect the driver’s gaze is directed. 

The Sprite also features the world’s first augmented-reality heating and air-conditioning system, which projects throughout the cabin 3D holographic images of the airflow, coloured in 256 shades of red and blue depending on the defined temperature. Rather than relying on antiquated touchscreen controls, the Sprite’s airflow can be varied by “pinching” the augmented airstreams, with the driver “throwing” the air to the floor, windscreen or occupants’ faces to direct it accordingly; temperatures are raised or lowered by the driver performing a corkscrewing motion with their hands as they do this.

Speaking exclusively to RHD, Austin-Healey’s director of innomagination, Klepto Haberdashcam, said: “We know drivers love technology, and the Sprite features enough systems, displays and innovative control methods to ensure they never need be bored by their exterior surroundings again.”

Power is sent to all four wheels via the industry’s only quad-speed electronic gearbox; two ratios are dedicated to facilitating the Sprite’s launch control system, with one gear for everyday driving, and a high “MasterDrive” ratio for speeds over 170mph.

Alloy wheel options begin at 23 inches and top out at 28 inches. Weighing in at just over 4,000kg, the Sprite Amphetamine’s tyres were specially developed to handle the physical forces sent by its eight electric motors. Austin-Healey’s director of excitement and delight, Selborne Hierarchy, revealed that the rubber for these tyres can only be harvested once a year from a small copse of trees on an uninhabited island in the South Atlantic. 

“Sustainability is intrinsic to the Austin-Healey brand”, said Hierarchy, “so just as our silk comes from renewable Bombyx mori moths fed on a prestige diet of truffled mulberry leaves, so too are our tyres produced by creating a brand-new industry in a previously undisturbed region of the world.”