DONALD HEALEY ACROSS THE USA

The Austin-healey 100 was one of the great exports which, along with the MGA and Triumph TR2, helped popularise the British sports car in Fifties America. Unlike MG and Triumph, however, Healey was a garagiste more akin to Allard or Turner than a part of a massmanufacturing conglomerate with a big marketing budget.

Donald Healey’s big idea, the Healey 100, had gained Austin power thanks to a deal struck with BMC boss Leonard Lord at the 1952 Earls Court show – but Lord’s focus was on saloon cars. While he would have access to Austin showrooms, Healey himself would have to make the 100 a hit.

Warwick-based Healey was too small an operation to justify a public relations officer, and the straight-talking Donald took it upon himself to popularise his new car. With four prototypes built by March 1953, he sent three to star at the Frankfurt, New York and Los Angeles motor shows respectively, and put another, chassis AHX3, on the Queen Mary to Manhattan.

Together with young Austin salesman Roy Jackson Moore, Donald set out on an exhausting tour of US Austin dealerships, racetracks and concours d’elegance in the Healey 100. In New York, the car was used as a demonstrator for the city’s dealer principles. Then Healey drove south. At Sebring, he demonstrated the car to Briggs Cunningham and announced his intention to contest the 1954 Sebring 12 Hours. At the World’s Fair in Miami it won Best in Show. Healey then crossed the southern States, showing the car in New

Orleans, Texas, Arizona and San Diego. In California, it was shown at the La Jolla concours and the San Francisco Motor Show, and at a race at Palm Springs.

At every juncture, Donald recorded the public response to the car and sent letters back to Warwick with recommendations for improvements and modifications including a need for larger, more powerful brakes. But Healey wasn’t finished in the US. After San Francisco, he doubled back to New York via Chicago and Detroit. At his final stop, the New York International Motor Sports Show, the car was named International Motor Show Car of 1953.

By 1955, the Warwick garagiste had sold 10,030 Healey 100s. By contrast, in the same period, the mighty Standardtriumph shifted 8636 TR2S.

‘Donald set out on an exhausting tour of US Austin dealerships, racetracks and concours d’elegance in the Healey 100’

In the late Seventies, a consumer survey in France presented respondents with a series of brand logos and asked them what they thought the companies made. One of the logos was Audi’s stylised script inside its red oval. The majority of returned surveys reckoned they made kitchen appliances.

The company was struggling for self-determination at the time. Run by Volkswagen since 1964, the relationship between the firms could be painfully unequal at times. Audi was regarded as a handy engineering firm employed whenever VW needed something more modern building, but the brand itself was frequently mismarketed.

It was variously known as Audi and Auto Union, and its four-ringed badge was historically associated with defunct

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