After John Sprinzel left Speedwell, he set up his own performance tuning and parts business, and decided that he wanted his own replacement front end for the Mk I "frogeye" Healey Sprite (Speedwell having the costin designed and W&P manufactured Monza bonnet). Who better to go to than the experts who produced the Monza front? He produced sketches which W&P titivated and transformed into the Sebring front, initially in alloy, and then in fibreglass. John Sprinzel comments:

"Len and Charlie were just superb at making stuff from sketches. I know they had a great relationship with Frank Costin, for whom they made fifteen or sixteen designs. The Speedwell GT, was, of course, to his drawings, as was the Speedwell record breaker streamliner. The Sebring front was to my sketch, which I made after Donald [Healey] showed me the [Sprite] Mark two front, and I thought this would sell like crazy, which it did. Sometime later we did the top together, me sitting in the Sprite, and showing how I needed hand space for the wheel and headroom, which the Speedwell GT didn't ever get, otherwise the top was entirely theirs.  They were such fun guys to deal with, and as I said, we were all as poor as church mice (including Chapman) so they never became body builders for the rich!"

The bodywork was launched simultaneously by both businesses at the 1961 Racing Car Show. On the W&P stand, along with a composite Lotus 19 bodyshell and a Formula Junior alloy body, the show guidebook states: "the latest Healey Sprite front in fibreglass is shown, which was designed and developed in conjunction with John Sprinzel", and PMO200 itself was exhibited on the Sprinzel stand. As set out in various brochures and in subsequent promotional material into the 70's, W&P always viewed the Sebring bodywork very much as "their" product. They produced fibreglass fronts, alloy doors, alloy coupe roofs, and alloy rear shrouds in the Sebring Coupe style over a period of time, selling directly to the public and carrying out bodywork conversions completely independently of Sprinzel, to cars that were unmodified mechanically by Sprinzel's works (e.g. 8401 UE). At the same time, John Sprinzel sold the same items under his own brand through his Lancaster Mews outlet.

W&P also produced a GRP Sebring hardtop launched at the 1962 Racing Car Show, similar in style to the frogeye works hardtop but without the front clips - this was never sold through Sprinzel and was a unique W&P branded product. A revised version for the Mk II Sprite / Mk I Midget followed in autumn 1962. Detailed photographs of these hardtops are shown on the "Oft Mistaken: Sebring GT Competitors" page which contains a gallery of assorted Sprite hardtops and bodywork.

original advert photograph, taken outside First Avenue in autumn 1962

The FIA homologation spec for a "Sebring Sprite" did not refer to bodywork, but to technical and mechanical issues. John Sprinzel was one of the purveyors of these enhancements, and they are covered in more detail on the Sprinzel Sebring Sprites page of this website.

This resulted in period converted W&P Sebring bodied Sprites, being road cars or partly enhanced cars for local competition, looking largely like what most of us currently visualise as a Sebring Sprite, but that technically were not so. At the same time there were mechanically correct fully homologated cars that were Sebring Sprites, but some of which looked to the untrained eye like standard frogeyes. Confused?

Many surviving fibreglass Sebring fronts on Mk I Sprites, which some might assume to be modern "replicas" because they were not on one of the six recognised W&P bodied Sprinzel cars, are actually original period W&P products straight from the First Avenue works and indeed came from exactly the same moulds in the same way as those on fibreglass fronted homolgated cars.

W&P's experience gained in making their original Sebring range of bodywork for the Mk I Sprite later spawned the Sebring GT range of products for the spridget.

Two special Sebring bodied Sprites were made by W&P with the Sebring front and hardtop - one for Charlie Williams' son John (believed to be WXM 924), and one for Len Pritchard's son Graham (4204 MV). The unique W&P Sebring "look" involves keeping the Sebring hardtop white, Sebring nose being bodied coloured, and customisation of the grill.