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Dominic Cooper Drives Classic Austin-Healey Sprite After Having Five Cars Stolen

One can’t help but wonder how it's even possible to fall prey to having five cars stolen in a year’s span. Actor Dominic Cooper might be wondering just the same thing. But that doesn’t stop him from taking classic Austin-Healey Sprite out for a drive.
Dominic Cooper's Austin-Healey 7 photos
Photo: Dominic Cooper via Leoedit
Austin-Healey Sprite Mark IVAustin-Healey Sprite Mark IVDominic Cooper and His FerrariDominic Cooper and His JaguarDominic Cooper and His JaguarDominic Cooper and his Girlfriend, actress Gemma Chan, and Range Rover
Despite having five vehicles of his stolen, Dominic Cooper, actor and car collector, still has some to be proud of. The 43-year-old actor went for a drive around London, behind the wheel of a classic Austin-Healey Sprite. Just like a big majority of his cars, this car is also red.

This one, which seems to be a Mark IV facelift, is part of the final iteration of the Sprite series, introduced in 1970. It comes with a 1.3-liter engine from the Mini Cooper S, putting out 65 horsepower and 72 lb-ft (98 Nm) of torque at 3000 rpm. The Healey series was discontinued in 1971, and nowadays, the average price for the classic is between $4,000 and $10,000. Nothing car thieves would write home about, so that's probably they never touched this Austin-Healey Sprite.

While it’s still an enigma how he managed to have so many cars stolen in a year, there’s one vehicle he managed to get back: a 1978 Ferrari Dino 308 GT4.

The red vehicle didn’t come cheap and the ones who stole it knew exactly what they were getting their hands on. Estimated at around $115,000, the actor found his stolen car five days after it went missing, in a junkyard. The Ferrari was sitting next to other four reported stolen cars. But none of those was his.

He didn’t have much luck with the rest of the stolen cars. Among them were another vintage Austin-Healey, a Range Rover, and a Jaguar XF. His other car, a convertible Jaguar F-Type coupe, was also reportedly broken into, and it looks like he really can’t catch a break.

We hope this one won’t get stolen in the future. But given Cooper’s bad luck when it comes to his cars, one might never know.

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Editor's note: The pictures include Dominic Cooper's other cars

About the author: Monica Coman
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Imagine a Wenn diagram for cars and celebrities. At the intersection you'll find Monica, putting her passion for these fields and English-Spanish double major to work. She's been doing for the past seven years, most recently at autoevolution.
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