Chris,
I ran across this story from Moss Motors today and thought it worth sharing. You could almost halve your frontal area using the same trick!
Cheers,
Rob
"Not often do great love stories involve East German fräuleins, machine gun toting guards and an Austin-Healey Sprite. But there are exceptions - sometimes even two - to what happens when true love gets interrupted by international politics.
It is almost impossible to believe that 25 years ago the Berlin Wall fell signaling the end of an era in a city divided since 1961.
Seeing news reports this morning commemorating the fall of the wall reminded me of a story that appeared in the LA Times when I was in high school about a series of escape attempts to the west involving an Austin-Healey Sprite.
Through the wonders of the internet and an eidetic memory here is an excerpt from the article -
WEST BERLIN, West Germany — Just after midnight on May 5, 1963, a red Austin Healey Sprite approached the barrier on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie. The top of the sports car was down, the windshield was missing, and at the wheel was Heinz Meixner, 20, an Austrian lathe operator.
He showed his passport to the East German guard, who waved him on to the customs shed. But instead of stopping for inspection, Meixner gunned the engine, skidded around the slalom course of barriers and--ducking his head--whizzed blindly under the three-foot-high steel-lift barrier and into West Berlin
Behind the seat was his East German fiancee, Margarete Thurau, and in the trunk her 48-year-old mother.
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What is really surprising to me is that a few months later the exact same car was used to effect another escape. Once again this story involves an individual in love with an East German woman (this has to be in the days before these females were used to great effect in the Olympics as weight lifters) and he had seen the previous news about Meixner's successful attempt.
He rented a Sprite - which was the same one used earlier - and placed his girlfriend in the trunk (which means that she had to be relatively svelte) and headed to Checkpoint Charlie. Stopped once by a guard (who pointed out a loose exhaust pipe) he drove towards the final barrier before gunning the engine and driving underneath the arm by ducking his head.
Alas, after the second attempt the Stasi got smart and steel bars were added below the barrier to prevent further escapes but let no one tell you that the little Sprite failed to make an important impact to the Cold War.
No word on whether the East German women rescued were worth all the trouble but I like to think that they were. Who knows? One of them may even have given us Claudia Schiffer."
Topic: Milwaukee Midget (Read 3275891 times)