Healeys Return to Bonneville

AUSTIN-HEALEYS RETURN TO BONNEVILLE

Most Austin-Healey owners would be well aware of the heritage that our cars enjoy. We have read about the successes of the marque in such iconic events as Le Mans, Sebring and the Liege-Rome-Liege. Many of us would also know of the successes that Donald Healey himself had on the salt flats of Bonneville from 1953 to 1956.

In what will no doubt be the most exciting event in modern Austin-Healey history, two very special Austin-Healey 100s reconstructed in Australia, are set to return to the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2009.

In 1953 the Donald Healey Motor Company built a special Austin-Healey 100 with the aim of setting both high speed as well as endurance records. This car, looking not too dissimilar to a standard 100 was driven by Donald Healey himself, George Eyston, Carroll Shelby, Mort Goodall and Roy Jackson Moore.

The following year they went back, more ambitious than before. Not only did they return with the more developed Endurance car from the year before, but also a special Streamliner that was based on a standard chassis, but with its body fitted with an extended nose and tail plus a stabilising fin.

The endurance car went on to bag a whole raft of long-distance records from 200km to 5,000km and 1 to 24 hours, while the Streamliner, with Donald Healey at the wheel achieved a high of 192.74 mph.

While the two cars were brought back to England, the Streamliner returned to Bonneville in 1956 with further modifications and 100-Six power where it was even more successful.

Both eventually succumbed to the ravages of the salt; however bits and pieces were known to survive. Decades later Dutch Austin-Healey enthusiast Wiet Huidekoper in a world wide search located many of these actual parts. Wiet formed a plan together with well known Australian Austin-Healey expert Steve Pike of reconstructing the cars and reliving the events of 1954 on the Bonneville salt.

Steve is a long term Austin-Healey enthusiast and along with his team at Marsh Classic Restorations has been restoring cars of the marque since the 1970s and enjoys a worldwide reputation as the expert on the 100S.

With access to Geoff Healey’s personal records and design drawings as well as the historic parts both cars are nearing completion and the target is to debut the endurance car in March 2009 at the Historic races at Phillip Island, Australia. The body/chassis of the Streamliner has been completed and from the attached photos looks just stunning. As originally, both cars will have early versions of the 100S engines. The Endurance car’s highly tuned engine will have an original “angle-faced head” and will be stopped by an early version of the smaller twin-piston brake callipers that were later developed for the 100S production racers. As originally the Streamliner will be supercharged and fitted with a variant of the original David Brown 5-speed gearbox. As the two cars have been reconstructed around the remains of what has been left, the souls of the 1954 cars have been brought back to life.

The team behind this most exciting Austin-Healey venture have set-up a website so that Austin-Healey enthusiasts around the world can keep across the events as they occur.

The site address is:- www.healeysreturntobonneville.com

For media information please contact:
Patrick Quinn
Sydney,
Australia
Email: publicity@healeysreturntobonneville.com
Tel: +61 417 673 065