THE SPARROW STORY
Photographing the 2016 New Sparrow Prototype During Its First Year on the Road
These photographs were taken in a spare couple of hours during a busy stretch of development. The 2016 prototype was the first complete new Sparrow to reach the road, and Mike Corbin drove it for a little less than a year while the team worked on the suspension and electric drivetrain. With much still to be done, the car went into town briefly for pictures.
From the Sparrow archive. Product plans, events and availability described here belong to the original historical period.
The car's place in the project
The new Sparrow project began by converting original car #100 to an AC drive to prove the powertrain. The 2016 prototype was the next step: a fresh monocoque chassis carrying the patented single-sided swingarm, a three-phase AC motor and a lithium-ion pack positioned between the front wheels. Corbin's history page from the period described it as the moment the Sparrow looked to be reborn.
The miles Mike put on this car fed directly into the later revisions recorded elsewhere in the archive, including new suspension, a new interior and the two-tone repaint. The team promised to post more pictures as the project went along, simply because they enjoyed seeing the car out in the world.