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Team_Sprite
Jedi Trainee
Offline
Hello all, my name is Brian Powers and I’d like to introduce myself and “Team Isetta.” I was a regular on the Spridget part of this Forum for a year or so, and have now stepped into the "other" world. I feel like I've left a group of real friends back there.
A little background will be helpful if you’ll bear with me.
I had been teaching in a small school in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California for ten years or so, when two of my long time students asked if I would be willing to teach them about cars. They wanted to learn, not only how they worked, but how to work on them as well. Following a remarkable series of coincidences and windfalls, four of the young ladies and I bought a 58 Bugeye as a tub and 21 boxes of unlabeled parts.
To keep this short, the story is worth checking out at https://www.morethanthecar.com/
Team Sprite was such an enormously gratifying success on every level, that when two of the girls asked if we could do another car, I started looking at once.
We needed another simple, small car that would let us work with all aspects of restoration, and, this was very important, something with a really high “cute factor.” These are, after all, 13 to 18 year girls, although if I had suggested a AA fuel dragster (am I dating myself here?) at least two of them would have jumped at it.
In one of those catch-up phone calls an old friend mentioned that his father-in-law had given them a 57 Isetta cabriolet that had been sitting (dead) in his garage since December of 1974. My wife and I drove to Wyoming in a borrowed pick-up, and upon our return, Team Isetta was born. So far our team has three girls and two boys, with another former Sprite girl probably signing on. Because of the wide spread in ages, 13 to 18, we decided to make the class an honors project with the kids meeting after school and through the summer as well. That allows us more flexible hours and assures the commitment of the applicants. The after-school classes will continue throughout the following school year.
This class, like the Team Sprite class, will be a restoration project, but this time they want to try for a show quality car. If you look at the bugeye site, you’ll see the kind of work they were able to accomplish, I feel confident they can do it again. We had an incredible amount of support throughout the Sprite project (look at the Sponsors and Miracle Workers pages), and that was probably the most important life lesson for the kids, the kindness of strangers in a world where kindness doesn’t usually make the press.
Well, I’ve waffled on here long enough. We’ve put up a site, and by next weekend should have some progress to show.
If you have any comments, or, hopefully, words of advice, please click the “contact us” button. I am definitely not a mechanic, but I love finding projects that light the kids up and I can usually manage to stay just a few steps ahead of them. I look forward to meeting (in print or in person) all of you.
Brian Powers
Living Wisdom School
Nevada City, Calif. 95959
https://www.morethanthecar.com/
A little background will be helpful if you’ll bear with me.
I had been teaching in a small school in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California for ten years or so, when two of my long time students asked if I would be willing to teach them about cars. They wanted to learn, not only how they worked, but how to work on them as well. Following a remarkable series of coincidences and windfalls, four of the young ladies and I bought a 58 Bugeye as a tub and 21 boxes of unlabeled parts.
To keep this short, the story is worth checking out at https://www.morethanthecar.com/
Team Sprite was such an enormously gratifying success on every level, that when two of the girls asked if we could do another car, I started looking at once.
We needed another simple, small car that would let us work with all aspects of restoration, and, this was very important, something with a really high “cute factor.” These are, after all, 13 to 18 year girls, although if I had suggested a AA fuel dragster (am I dating myself here?) at least two of them would have jumped at it.
In one of those catch-up phone calls an old friend mentioned that his father-in-law had given them a 57 Isetta cabriolet that had been sitting (dead) in his garage since December of 1974. My wife and I drove to Wyoming in a borrowed pick-up, and upon our return, Team Isetta was born. So far our team has three girls and two boys, with another former Sprite girl probably signing on. Because of the wide spread in ages, 13 to 18, we decided to make the class an honors project with the kids meeting after school and through the summer as well. That allows us more flexible hours and assures the commitment of the applicants. The after-school classes will continue throughout the following school year.
This class, like the Team Sprite class, will be a restoration project, but this time they want to try for a show quality car. If you look at the bugeye site, you’ll see the kind of work they were able to accomplish, I feel confident they can do it again. We had an incredible amount of support throughout the Sprite project (look at the Sponsors and Miracle Workers pages), and that was probably the most important life lesson for the kids, the kindness of strangers in a world where kindness doesn’t usually make the press.
Well, I’ve waffled on here long enough. We’ve put up a site, and by next weekend should have some progress to show.
If you have any comments, or, hopefully, words of advice, please click the “contact us” button. I am definitely not a mechanic, but I love finding projects that light the kids up and I can usually manage to stay just a few steps ahead of them. I look forward to meeting (in print or in person) all of you.
Brian Powers
Living Wisdom School
Nevada City, Calif. 95959
https://www.morethanthecar.com/
Last edited:
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