My First Car: '58 Austin Healy Sprite, Camille Carlin, 67, St. Petersburg

'58 Austin Healy Sprite

My first car was a 1958 Austin Healy Sprite, purchased in 1962 for $800 in Mobile, Ala. I had been attending the University of Alabama and had to drop out because I didn't have enough money for the next semester's school expenses. I did have $800 and convinced myself that a sports car would be a good consolation for having to stay out of school for a while. A couple of male friends had Triumph TR4s and taught me how to pull out spark plugs and clean them and space them. They taught me a few more maintenance chores I had never expected to know how to do as a female in the 1960s. I loved driving on the open road in it, but being blown aside by huge passing trucks was a little unnerving. Most of the cars back then were very big and drivers had a hard time seeing a little car. Eventually, I had a fender bender and was scraping together the insurance deductible. Shortly after, the Sprite was parked on the street and was sideswiped in a hit-and-run. This caused a second insurance deductible to be needed. Unable to come up with two deductibles, I ultimately had to scrap the Sprite. It was the most fun $800 I ever spent!