THE SPARROW STORY
The Original Corbin Sparrow: Limited Production, the End of Corbin Motors and the Cars That Remain
The original Sparrow was built in limited numbers between 1998 and 2003, with Mike Corbin later estimating the total at about 300 cars. Corbin Motors never made the step to high-volume production that would have made it profitable. Instead the company ran on investor funds while research, development and small-scale production continued.
From the Sparrow archive. Product plans, events and availability described here belong to the original historical period.
How the company ended
The archive attributes the closure directly to the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Investment became scarce, and without new capital the Sparrow could not move beyond hand assembly. Corbin Motors shut its doors in 2003, ending both Sparrow production and the Merlin roadster program before the Merlin reached production.
During its short life the car went through a redesign. The Generation 2 Sparrow of 1999 to 2003 gained a larger trunk and conventional wheels, and drivers nicknamed it the Pizza Butt. Original cars ran on DC motors that the team later described as reliable and long-lived.
The cars today
Sparrows can still be found on the road, and at the time this gallery was written an active Sparrow Owners Group on Yahoo Groups was devoted to keeping them running. One survivor, car #100, became the test bed for the AC drivetrain that started the new Sparrow project.