Expert Buyer: What to pay for a good Austin-Healey 3000

There’s good money in ’Healeys. The cheap bargains are gone and shabby 3000s are a rare breed. So what’s left, and how much should you pay?

You’ll find plenty of Austin-Healey specialists across the UK offering advice, sales and restorations. Their forecourts (now that so many of their customers are hitting retirement) are increasingly the natural habitat of well-sorted 3000s, built with hefty budgets for owners with decades of experience.

‘The market has evolved a lot’, says well-known ’Healey expert, Bill Rawles (Rawles Classic Cars, rawlesclassiccars.co.uk). ‘Most of our customers now are 65plus – ‘old boys’ wanting to have something special that they can pass on. The cars on the market are pretty well-sorted now.

‘Most of those we see are older restorations. The newer concours restorations don’t come up for sale that much because they’re usually done for private individuals who then keep hold of them.’

Worthy project cars are even rarer. A few are still brought over from the USA (where more than 90 per cent of Austin-Healeys were originally sold) but take care, warns Rawles, because the best were imported years ago: ‘It’s the dregs now, and if a car has been worked on in the States, it’s normally been bodged.’

Austin-Healeys have always been stars of motorsport, and wellproven modifications can improve their value. The MkIIIs (1964-68) are the most sought-after, but Rawles says: ‘If it’s an original UK car with matching numbers, it’ll be worth good money whether it’s a MkI, MkII or MkIII. The 100-4 has come up a lot in the last five years because people have realised it’s such a lovely car for country lane driving. They’re now worth almost as much as a 3000 MkIII.’