Well-travelled Austin Healey ‘Frog Eye’ has seen good times, with the top down

For almost five decades, British ship broker Keith Martin, 69, has owned one of the cutest cars ever made, which he brought with him from Britain to Hong Kong.

“I am driving a 1959 Austin Healey (Frog Eye) Sprite. I purchased it in 1969, when I completed my apprenticeship in Plymouth, in Britain. I really just wanted a small open-top car to drive from Plymouth to the Midlands, to see my parents. The Frog Eye was the ideal car and I have owned it ever since.

It has such a happy looking bonnet and kids just seem to love it – even in the 1970s and 1980s they did. Initially I painted it “Absolutely Bright Yellow” with a green stripe. My wife and I had our honeymoon in Britain in it in 1984, driving around Scotland in gorgeous weather with the hood off, and stopping at some wonderful scenic spots such as Loch Lomond and the Caledonian Canal.

The car stayed in the UK when I came to Hong Kong in 1983, and I brought it out here in 2010, but before that it was fully rebuilt back to its original details, including its “Whitehall Grey” paintwork. It has its same UK registration number: 278 HKT.

I shipped the car to Europe from Hong Kong on April 17, 2014, and picked it up in Naples, Italy on May 21. Then my wife Maria and I drove it up through Tuscany and Switzerland, with [friends] Charles White and his wife Timi, and their 1953 split-screen Morris Minor Convertible called Daisy. We did roughly 3,000 kilometres over 15 days, with memorable stops at Chianti de Radda in Tuscany, Pisa and Santa Margherita, near Portofino, where the food was really good.

We drove on to Como, and the San Bernardino Pass into the Central Swiss Alps and Interlaken, which seemed to have as many Chinese and watch shops as Hong Kong. All the shops had mainland Chinese salespersons.

Then we drove through France and had tea and scones in Canterbury. The Frog Eye was then shipped back here to its adopted home. That was another great trip with my wife. We had the hood up once in three weeks – it was gorgeous.