Modified Bugeyes

Plus-sized Bugeyes

February 14, 2025 by bugeyeguy

We’ve had a very busy winter so far sorting out various classic British cars and making them wonderful to drive and use. This week, we worked on “Stretch,” which is one of the two long wheel base Bugeyes that we’ve constructed. Both of them were cut in half and extended by 5 inches in the middle to make the car easier to get in and out of… this was helpful for large (or otherwise physically challenged) people who really wanted to enjoy a Bugeye in spite of their physical limitations.

*An older photo of Stretch, taken before we re-upholstered the seats and changed the steering wheel in 2022. Can you tell which is longer, Stretch or Cole (background car with red top)?*

Stretch was built for a fellow who was 6’4″ tall and not as nimble as he was in high school, so a LWB Bugeye was his only pathway to later in life Bugeye ownership. Now, Stretch has been purchased by a different client who just really enjoys having a little more room in the cockpit in spite of the fact that he is able to comfortably operate a stock size Bugeye; in fact, you can see in the video below that he owns both black and white bugeyes shown: one stock length (“Floyd”) and one stretched, and he loves them both.

Our second stretched Bugeye is living in the Boston area and is silver, and that one was built by a fellow in Pennsylvania, who also had some joint issues and needed more space. He has since passed away, so we finished building the car for his nephew.

This car is not only stretched, but one of a kind with several custom one-off touches, including vents on the hood, a head fairing, and a few other modifications. She’s a performance Bugeye, with a supercharger and a Datsun 5 speed transmission.

If your classic English car is not optimized, we will be delighted to pick it up and bring it to our shop this winter. Please give us a call! At the moment, we have cars from Minnesota, California, Arizona all in our shop here in Connecticut, so it’s easy for us to retrieve your vehicle wherever you might be!

We make a modified Bugeye into a superb Bugeye!

January 17, 2025 by bugeyeguy

The car you see here represents a very special project. She came to us with tons of modifications already made, yet still suffered from multiple issues that needed to be addressed. It wasn’t fun to drive… it was over-modified and over-upgraded, with no sense of direction and no sense of integration. We were tasked with making it all work, which meant removing some mods, and adding others, so that the car could find the sweet spot.

We disassembled and completely rebuilt it, de-tuning were necessary, and upgraded it in other ways. It has a new wiring harness, new fuel system, new hydraulic system, and a lot of cosmetic improvements, and the net result is a very sweet and very special modified Bugeye. Check out the video above and enjoy!

We love picking up cars throughout America bringing them here for a makeover and sending them back home. It’s it’s so exciting to be able to take a car that’s not that’s not a terribly useful asset for an owner and turn it into something that makes them grin with joy, and that’s exactly what we did here in the case of Alex’s Bugeye.

Look for this one in West Palm Beach, Florida… the guy with a grin? That will be Alex.

“Goldie,” a 1959 Super Bugeye Sprite for sale, superb performance and upgrades! Signature model!

January 2, 2025 by bugeyeguy

Nearly $100,000 was spent to build out this car. We built it right, and given our experience with hundreds of Sprites, we know how to make a great product. For example, with a supercharged Sprite you need to make sure that the clutch pressure plate is upgraded or you will have a slipping clutch from the extra boost. Goldie has this modification, along with a long list of other upgrades.

This $100k project is available at a deep discount and is on offer for $54,995. Read the post below and give us a call if Goldie would look good in your garage!

If you like upgraded classic cars, this one is worth a serious look. We built Goldie in the Spring of 2021 for a client who wanted the best of everything (he’s now got too many cars and asked us to find Goldie a new home). This five-speed 1275 engine car has a big boost (up to 8 pounds) supercharger kit (and an upgraded clutch kit to handle the extra power) as well as a new ring gear, rear disk brakes and a complete new valve job with hardened valve seats for unleaded pump gas. Just about every part of this car is restored or upgraded within the past four years.

The transmission is a Datsun 5-speed, in excellent condition. In Spring of 2021, we changed the radius arms and changed the rear wheel bearings and axle shafts. Previously, we had put in a new wiring harness, all new copper nickel brake lines and installed new powder coated black rims with powder coated lug nuts. We also put in four new lever shocks and LED lights.

We upgraded the interior hardura mats and custom stitched them with matching gold thread. We then built custom seats with all new foam, also with matching gold thread. And we made a matching custom tonneau too. We also removed and polished the cockpit trim, replaced the windshield and glazing rubber.

The car has a 1275 engine and supercharger, alternator upgrade, new carburetor, spin-on oil filter, electronic ignition, seat belts are upgraded, speedometer is upgraded to a GPS unit, exhaust is better, header, supercharger, high performance clutch for the power upgrade, aluminum radiator, rear disk brakes, etc, etc.

If you want a really zoomy Bugeye, take a close look. This super Sprite is worthy of my signature that lives on the fender, and she was built by our dedicated team of pros, just 387 miles ago. The prior owner has a large collection of cars and only used the car sporadically since we delivered it in May of 2021 so the new owner will get to enjoy a long list of upgrades, which totals more than $40k! Someone will be very lucky to take Goldie to a new home!

Click “read more” below for a full compliment of photos and give us a call if you’re interested!

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Caramel topping

December 20, 2024 by bugeyeguy

Behind every stunning sculpture we build is a healthy dose of color angst. We sweat the details here, and the colors on Sage, for example, we are so far off the traditional color map that we worked particularly hard to make this car look hot. The tonneau color was the final choice, and one that I do not make lightly, because the tonneau adds a giant splash of color to the center of the car.

It has to be right.

Here’s the unveiling of our final choice… we looked at multiple espressos and an infinite variety of chocolates (from milk to dark) but we ultimately settled on a rich caramel stayfast topping. This color perfectly matches the highlights in Sage’s leather dashboard covering and perfectly complements our color theme, serving as a rich accent to the car’s Sage green exterior. We sewed this custom tonneau here in our shop with contrasting khaki thread and then we custom fit the new tonneau to the car.

Magnifique!

Sage is still available, and if you are looking for the ultimate head turning cars and coffee king, this car is a stunning, one-of-a-kind signed edition. Sage is the best Bugeye we can build (and you can own).

*The tonneau material underneath a swatch of the dash vinyl shows the delightful contrast between browns.*

Sage is now complete. If you are serious about owning a stunning reinterpretation of the iconic Bugeye Sprite, click the photo below for more information and give us a call!

Super Sprite delight

November 29, 2024 by bugeyeguy

Now that we’ve sold 425 Bugeyes (and restored roughly another hundred of them for clients around the country), we’ve had a lot of time to think about what constitutes the ultimate British sports car. I’ve owned Big Healeys, MGBs, MGAs, MG-T series cars, as well as TR3‘s, Spitfire‘s, Minis, Morris Minors and some Lotuses; I always come back to the Bugeye as the most capable, stout, and fun car to drive and own. If only they had a little more style and luxury to them, then we’d be all set!

*This is* Angus, *a Super Sprite we have built for a customer in California. Lots of fun touches on this one, including new minilite knock-off wheels, Blockley tires, and a chopped windscreen!*

That’s what we’ve set out to do with each Super Sprite. We build each Super Sprite as its own unique interpretation of itself; we give each of them a little more style, a little more horsepower, a little bit better performance, and capitalize on the wonderful foundation that we were given when the cars were built roughly 65 years ago.

Check out the video here, you get to see some of our favorite Super Sprites, what I consider to be among the best Frogeyes in the world. Sage, Goldie, and Jesse are for sale (click their photos below to learn more), and if you’d like us to build your own custom Sprite, please don’t hesitate to call! We will be bringing Sprites to our shop in Connecticut all winter long to transform them, and if you’d like us to look at your car, please do get in touch!

Floppy nostrils

November 29, 2024 by bugeyeguy

We do a lot of Bugeye front-flip conversions. Many cars come to our shop for this upgrade (please give us a call if you’d like us to transform your car to a flip nose configuration). It’s extremely popular because just about every Sprite driver has a lower back that has seen a lot of service through the years, and lifting these noses in the conventional configuration is one more stressor for lower back muscles and discs that could use a break.

*All our Super Sprites have flip-forward noses.*

Switching to a flip nose configuration is the bees knees because it’s much easier to lift the nose from the windshield side and flip it forward, and it doesn’t strain your body at all. The challenge in making this modification is that you can rarely just slap a flip-front nose kit onto a Bugeye and have good alignment, for multiple reasons.

*Getting your Bugeye’s nose to flip forward is a great upgrade. After fitting the nose properly, you can attain nice alignment as you can see above.*

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