When Donald Met Leonard

Donald Healey's career was blessed with a number of fortuitous meetings. His shipboard encounter with George Mason we've covered before. That led to the Nash-Healey. We also devoted a CarPort to his collaboration with Colin Chapman on the Jensen-Healey. More successful than either of those meetings was his conversation with Austin's chairman Leonard Lord at the 1952 London Motor Show.

The Nash-Healeys were not selling well, and Nash was losing $1,000 on every one that did. Healey worked up an all-British sports car, using mechanicals from the foundering Austin A-90 Atlantic. The new car's body was an attractive two-seater by Jensen of West Bromwich, then building the A-40 Sports for Austin. Healey took it to the show. Lord was impressed and a deal was struck. What had been the Healey Hundred (based on its top speed) became the Austin-Healey 100 and went into production for 1953. At first the cars had a three-speed gearbox, soon increased to four in a minor update in 1955.

In 1956, a 2.6-liter six was substituted for the 100's four of about the same size. The new car was called the 100-6, and sold as an "occasional four-seat sports tourer," since two small people could sit in back. In 1959, the engine was enlarged to 2,912 cc so the car was renamed "3000." A MkII version in 1961 featured three carburetors and a revised grille. The final version, MkIII, was built from 1963 to 1967 (this one is in works competition specification).

Difficulties in conforming to the new US safety and environmental regulations led to its discontinuation at the end of the year, since the American market took the preponderance of production. The British Motor Corporation, as Austin had become, tried to make a stopgap successor out of the MGB GT by fitting a three liter engine. (Mat, editor of a local MG newsletter, advises that the only things the MGC engine shares with the Austin-Healey are its bore and stroke. The fact that they have identical displacements causes some confusion.) The resulting MGC GT was a flop, euthanized at the end of 1969. Thus ended the Austin-Healey saga, except for the smaller sibling Sprite, which continued into 1971.

I've never owned a "big Healey," but I've driven several. They're great fun, fast, good handling cars with a deliciously throaty exhaust note. The latter is a hazard. The car is so low that any small bump will tear the muffler right off.