A Bugeye Sprite is a wonderful antidote for the fast-paced modern world. With no lane-holding, auto-cruise control or back-up camera (and no facebook posts or bluetooth while driving), the focus is pure and basic transportation. Not that there is anything wrong with modern vehicles and their many wonderful high-tech features… it’s just that as the world seems to keep accelerating every year, a Bugeye feels more and more like comfort food. Simple. Unencumbered. Basic. Old-fashioned bliss.
I have had my Bugeye Gumby since 1978, and with each wave of global transformation and population growth, these cars just seem the perfect anecdote for all that ails. If you long for simpler times (even if just on weekends), then a Bugeye Sprite is powerful medicine.
Given this underlying sentiment, I found a new state of nirvana this week when I took a client’s Bugeye on a 60 minute road test (after a two month restoration project) with one goal in mind… to master an even simpler mode of transport. My wife and I head to the UK this May for a tour of a few cottage motorcar factories followed by a horseback trek across Wales. We will ride a total of 100 miles in those five days, ending in Aberystwyth with a ride on the beach. While I have ridden a horse before, I am not a rider (my wife has been riding all her life) so I have a lot of work to do. And a lot of sore muscles to develop!
To drive a Bugeye to ride a horse left me feeling ecstatic. As the world gets more complicated around me, here was a new way to attain an even higher level of lower-order simplicity. 45 horsepower is good. One horse power is bliss. Give me leather and straps. And an olfactory escape from hydrocarbons.
I wrangled my horse in the field, removed his tonneau and tacked him-up, and rode around an indoor ring for 30 minutes with a coach barking at me to push my heels down and keep my head up. Then, I returned the horse to the paddock, gave him some hay, and proceeded back to my luxury vehicle.
After my ride, imagine the pure delight I experienced upon firing up my far more sophisticated multi-horse steed. No girth to tighten, no pesky straps to fasten and no pile of manure to clean on the barn floor (I’ll take an oil stain any day). I turned the key and my Sprite roared. No squeezing, kicking or clucking is required. Ahhh, the ease with which the foot actuated pedal is applied, instant power and steering no less, unencumbered by the fickle whims of an untamed four-legged creature.
I galloped home in my fine motorcar, feeling quite sophisticated and sublime.
