EARLS COURT HEALEY
Star of the ’55 show, back in the spotlight
Y ou’d have wanted to carry an umbrella to the first day of the 40th London Motor show on 19 October 1955. The exceptionally hot summer that followed the big freeze of 1954/1955 broke on that very day. Temperatures plummeted and more than 27mm of rain fell on London, so Earls Court visitors would have been in danger of a bath as they walked along, humming snatches of that year’s hot release,
Rock Around The Clock from Bill Haley and His Comets. More than half-a-million visitors came to the ten-daylong motor show, keen to see the all-new Jaguar 2.4-litre saloon, as well as the UK debuts of the MGA, Triumph TR3 and Citroën DS19, the last of which had already set records at the Paris Salon earlier that month when it took a record 743 orders in the first 15 minutes of the show’s opening and 12,000 in the first day…
‘Cars for the family man; for the sportsman; for the millionaire and for the lady driver; indeed cars to suit every walk of life,’ boasted the Earls Court programme.
Over at the Austin-Healey stand, the news was the introduction of the mark-two version of the two-year-old Austin-Healey 100, which came with a visual kick that Donald Healey, ever the showman, exploited to the full. Along with slightly bigger front wheelarches, a four-speed gearbox to replace the BN1’s three-speeder (actually four ratios but with the lowest slot in the gate blanked off ), and a stronger hypoid rear axle, the ’Healey 100, for the first time, became available with the option of two-tone paint. That classic ’Healey curving swageline, penned with such deft skill by Gerry Coker and much copied since, could be used as a visual paint division and the two-tone Big Healey was born.
Two cars were produced in what was called Florida Green over Old English White (not surprisingly, North America was a huge market for the Big Healey). These pistachio-green, two-tone 100 models not only had trackstopping exteriors, but, with the leather and trim colour matched to the Florida Green coachwork, they were a visual feast in the cabin as well.
The first car, registered TAC 620, was the Earls Court demonstrator, a tuned 100M model kept in the car park to impress customers, who (so it’s rumoured) weren’t told of that car’s enhanced specification. The second car, the one you see here, registered TAC 787, was the Earls Court stand car, appearing alongside the debuting pink-and-
‘This Austin-Healey 100 came with a visual kick that Donald Healey exploited to the full’
black 100M model. Both TAC cars were the first ’Healeys to be painted in this Florida Green shade and the colourmatched trim was also a first, although not available in production models, which were trimmed in black.
A number of details were re-discovered during its immaculate restoration by Stephen Norton and his team of engineers and craftspeople at Cape International, the ’Healey parts and restoration specialist. The company had previously restored Austin-Healey’s 1953 Turin show car and some details were common to both, including the pencilled ‘Show’ on the back of cockpit trim parts and the chrome-plated wiring loom clips in the engine bay.
The car is a star lot at the Bonhams auction at the Goodwood Festival of Speed on 30 June. The estimated hammer price of between £100,000 and £140,000 is some stretch from the £1060 it would have cost in 1955, even if the Bank of England inflation calculator indicates that value today as £25,521. Bonhams auctioned the sister car, TAC 620, in 2013 at its December sale, with the hammer coming down at £161,660 including premium. Jamie Knight, Bonhams’ managing director, is something of an Austin-Healey fan and owns an original 100 BN1 in what he calls ‘mid-life crisis trim with a leather bonnet strap’.
He’ll be the auctioneer on the day for TAC 787 and says he’s looking forward to it. ‘I’ve certainly got a soft spot for ’Healeys,’ he says, and, while he admits that the Florida coachwork is fairly lurid, it was the key to getting attention at the show. ‘Donald Healey was a master at getting a hell of lot of bangs for his bucks in those days,’ he says.
What a beautiful thing that Earls Court ’Healey must have seemed 62 years ago; it certainly had significance well beyond its sun-kissed paintwork. The UK was only five years out of fuel rationing and meat rationing had only ceased in 1954; Anthony Eden had replaced Sir Winston Churchill as leader of the Conservatives and had won the May General Election, Newcastle won that year’s FA Cup for the sixth time, The Dam Busters movie was released, Stirling Moss won the British Grand Prix at Aintree, and that long hot summer had turned everyone’s thoughts to a better post-war life – less grey and a lot more fun.
It also had significance as far as Austin-Healey’s moneyed backer, Austin, was concerned. The famous verbal deals between its chairman Sir Leonard Lord and Donald Healey were already the stuff of legend. ‘One problem with this was that no-one kept notes of the
‘That coachwork evokes a Californian summer day by the pool like nothing else’
meetings… Everything was done on the basis of trust and understanding,’ wrote Geoffrey Healey, Donald’s son, in his book The Healey Story.
It was on the basis of such a verbal deal that Austin provided engines for the first Austin-Healey 100, from its A90 Atlantic, a heavily US-influenced convertible launched in 1949. This bumbling cabrio hadn’t pulled up many trees sales-wise and had been heavily overshadowed by Jaguar’s sleek XK120, launched the year before. These were still the years of ‘Export or Die,’ as Britain attempted to manufacture and sell itself out of wartime debt.
Leonard Lord saw sports cars as a way of gaining valuable export currency from America, as well as leveraging his company’s manufacturing expertise and capacity. And those export markets were strong – out of 4604 Austin-Healey BN2s built, only 165 were UK righthand-drive cars. Things were going so well that Lord initially refused permission for his own MG marque to replace its MG TD model, but falling sales in the US forced a change of heart, hence the introduction of the MGA at the 1955 Frankfurt show and its UK debut at Earls Court at the same time as the introduction of the Austin-Healey BN2 100.
It’s arguable that decisions like this and the internal tensions they created helped destroy the partnership between Austin and Healey in 1967, when the last Big Healey left the production line. US emissions and safety legislation almost killed off the sports car anyway, but Lord’s legacy of sprawling and disjointed model ranges and marques, at what became the British Motor Corporation, was a teetering edifice that proved impossible to maintain.
Not that any of that bothered Lieutenant Colonel Hyde of Woking, who visited the show, saw TAC 787 and pulled out his wallet, taking delivery of this very show car that November. Colonel Hyde had a fair old stable. He also owned, or went on to own, another ’55 Earls Court debut, a Jaguar 2.4, as well as a Mini, a Vespa and a Vincent HRG.
Hyde kept the car for eight years, putting some 45,000 miles on the odometer and having it regularly serviced. Then it was purchased by Alan Wayland, who we’ll return to. Just £395 sealed the deal for this man from Plaistow in Sussex, who put 10,000 miles on the clock touring in Europe, including a visit to the Italian Lakes. Bills and paperwork show that Wayland looked after his car well, with regular servicing, a new clutch at 45,300 miles, an engine overhaul at 50,465 and a repaint in its original Florida Green/OEW combination. In 1965 he sold it with about 55,000 miles on the clock for £325.
It then passed through a couple of owners’ hands, moving from Woking to Ashford, in Kent, and to Luton, before being purchased by Keith Boyer, a noted Aussie Austin-Healey collector and parts supplier around 1983.
‘He knew exactly what it was,’ says Norton, who was building up his parts and restoration business at the time, and regularly traded with Boyer. ‘It lived in his back garden, half under a tarp, and wasn’t in great condition. It took me about five years to persuade him to sell. He told me to put a figure on a piece of paper, which I gave to him. “Does that buy it?” I asked, and it did.’
That was 1997, but Norton didn’t touch the car for a long while. ‘Since we’d done the Turin car, I knew it was a mountain to climb.’ But eventually he set to and the car revealed itself, ‘layer by layer’.
One bonus was tracking down Alan Wayland, who proved a fount of wisdom on the car and also had some evocative photographs of it touring in Italy (see left), as well as bills, MoT test certificates and even the rare, original BMC travel rug he kept in the car. Wayland was terribly ill, though, and died before the restoration was complete. ‘He was brilliant, an enormous help, and it’s a terrible shame that he didn’t get to see the car fully restored,’ says Norton.
Painstakingly the car was stripped, and its useable parts conserved, including the Trico vacuum-powered windscreen wipers, which were put on the show car by Austin-Healey – neither the BN1 or BN2 models had washer jets as standard.
‘Austin-Healeys by their nature are really a two-part restoration because of the inner body,’ says Norton. He explains how the inner body has to be restored and painted first, then the mechanicals fitted into it. After that the outer coachwork is fitted and painted, followed by the exterior trim. ‘I took 500 photos of the work in progress,’ he says; ‘some of them weren’t pretty. Doing this you need to be extremely careful and mindful of what you are trying to recapture.’
It’s hard to see this as anything other than the car that appeared on the show stand 62 years ago. The panel fit is extraordinary, the gaps near-perfect, the trim rulerstraight, and that coachwork evokes a Californian summer day by the pool like nothing else. In fact, during the late stages of the rebuild, Norton managed to track down a black-and-white photograph of the ’55 Earls Court stand and there it is, TAC 787, facing three-quarters away from the camera.
It’s tight and new and, although it starts on the button, it’s done only 30 miles since being rebuilt, so any criticism of its driving qualities would be inappropriate. What you can say is that, while the look is modern, the driving position is rather more pre-war in nature. You slide one leg under the wheel, and then move your posterior into the back of the seat squab before bringing the other leg into the car. Even with the seat in its fully rearward position, that big steering wheel brushes both thighs. With coil-sprung wishbone front, a leaf-sprung live rear
axle, lever-arm dampers all round and an A90’s worm-and-peg steering system, you’d expect that an hour behind the wheel would be more than enough for most spines, not to mention the slightly alarming prospect of getting it stopped using the standard 11in Girling drum brakes.
Yet it’s so charming, with its beguilingly simple four-dial dash and huge overdrive toggle switch. ’Healey 100s also had a tilting windscreen, which leaves your fizzog feeling like the cratered surface of the moon after a brisk drive, but improves the aerodynamics and the looks. Must have been expensive, though, as it was dropped for the following year’s ’Healey 100/6. The relatively unstressed 2.7-litre Austin A90 Atlantic pushrod lump thumps out 150lb ft of torque at 2000rpm and is best driven gently in top, with the overdrive engaged (it works on third and fourth gears), enjoying the scenery while everyone else enjoys the look of your car.
Not that TAC 787 is likely to be driven that much. Norton freely admits that ’Healey 100s that are built to be driven regularly and to hold their own on modern roads will be fitted with a lot of subtle modifications to make them steer and corner better, go faster, and to be more reliable and less prone to the corrosion that decimated so many back in the day.
‘About 65mph is all you really want to do in this car as it is,’ he says. ‘After that it gets a bit exciting.’
So where does he see it ending up? ‘I see it in a decent collection: perhaps a museum? I’m almost pleased when people say they don’t like it, because that means there’s someone else who is going to love and utterly cherish it.’
So is Norton going to miss it? He thinks hard. ‘My wife asked me the same question in a different way,’ he says. ‘She asked me “How do you see the car?” I’ve got over 30 years invested in the ’Healey game, so there’s a lot of heart involved in what I do, but this car was always going to be a reward for effort rather than a keeper, and it was all about enthusiasm rather than speculation – it’s actually the first ’Healey with any provenance I’ve owned. Cars are the glue that keep relationships together and that’s how it was with this car and Keith Boyer and me. So I’d say, if you are interested, bring your heart and your wallet.’
Profound words from the man with engine oil under his fingernails, but true as well. This Austin-Healey is a deeply covetable machine that deserves to be used, even if only on very special occasions. THANKS TO Bonhams, www.bonhams.com, and Cape International, www.cape-international.com.