A Man’s tonneau

This week, we have seen one of the finest corruptions of proper British toppings yet and present to you the “Shlong,” tonneau, the world’s first combination short and long tonneau (see photo above). I never knew such a possibility existed. I suppose we could call it a “universal” tonneau, but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Long tonneau on red Zippy, short tonneau on Goldie.

That this work of art came with a extremely high level car we just bought (you haven’t seen the car yet) makes this all the more amusing. I don’t know how someone could follow all the details of restoring a sprite so nicely and miss this one detail so catastrophically. All Sprites that came with tonneaus came with EITHER a short or long tonneau, not both.

Most of the aftermarket tonneaus sold are long tonneaus. These are intended to utilize the top fittings on the back deck – four tenax, two twist fittings (if you’re missing these fittings, you can purchase them by clicking here). It’s efficient, one merely utilizes the existing top fittings on the car (of course you also need a row of dash fittings, included in the kit linked above).

Short tonneau on Patrick’s Ashley Bugeye

But what to do if your car has a row of lift dot fittings on the back deck just aft of the trim strip? (see Ducky below or the red car above) These are short tonneau fittings. With this admittedly busier set up, you have more fittings and these are solely for the short tonneau, they do not share. I am guessing that only short tonneaus were actually fit at the factory when a tonneau was ordered by a customer, because proper short tonneau fittings are always exactly uniform and consistent, as though factory installed.

If short tonneaus and fittings were dealer installed I think we would see some more variety and inconsistencies with how they are placed. I’m guessing that a dealer fit tonneau would’ve been the long type so if you ordered one while your car was in the show room I suspect your dealer would install the longer version because it’s easier to fit to the car. So until someone out there can show me evidence to the contrary, I’m going to go with the theory that all short tonneau cars were ordered with tonneaus from the factory and all long tonneau cars were either fit by the dealer or fit by a restorer or upholsterer sometime after the car was on the road.

Factory short tonneau fittings on “Ducky”

Now that we’ve handled about 400 Bugeyes over the past 15 years, I would guess about 300 of them have had no rear deck short tonneau fittings and the other 100 have had the row of seven short tonneau fittings we are showcasing above.

So you are either short or long. If you need rear deck templates that replicate the proper location of fittings, you can purchase them by clicking here.