This is Mary, the proud new owner (with her husband Frank, he might also get to drive it) of our Bugeye “Vanilla.” It is always really fun for us to turn new people onto these cars, and clearly, here we have a great new member(s) of the tribe.
Frank and Mary came to visit so we could confirm fitment. She’s 5’1 and the seat was low for her. You can see in the photo above that her head was initially a bit low in the windshield glass (note the gap between her head and the top of the windshield).
In the photo above you can see the gap with Mary seated on our more firm seat pillow. We removed the less dense foam from the seat pan and recovered our more comfortable and slightly taller seat foam with the red and white seat cover. Now, Mary is ready to go.
The original Sprite seat base foams are easy to identify since they are chambered, with large holes on the back of the pillow. Our replacement might be thicker than the original, although we will never know how much that original foam has compacted in 60 years-perhaps they were once this thick! But the foam we use is very dense, and thus more comfortable, more shock absorbing, and can help shorter folks fit the car. If you would like one (or two) of these thicker pillows, you can order them by clicking here.
Another great nice upgrade we provided was to weld extensions on the driver’s seat tracks. With this enhancement, the seat can slide forward far enough for Mary, and also slide fully back for Frank. We might have moved the mounts forward for Mary, but this would have compromised the length for Frank. Extending the tracks allows the best of both worlds, and a greater range of possibilities. We also left the slightly less dense foam in the passenger seat, so Frank can switch seat bottoms when he drives the car if he feels that Mary’s pillow is too high.
Our car #248 is now ready to go, with custom seating given the needs of the new owners. This one proves yet again that Sprites can accommodate a wide range of users, despite it’s small overall size. Our tallest customer yet is 6’4″ and with Mary at 5’1,” here’s further proof that just about anyone can fit into a Frogeye.
