Austin Healy

 Most beautiful car ever

Perhaps fate is a real thing.  Perhaps some things are preordained.  Perhaps life is more than a series of not very interesting, accidental occurrences.  Perhaps pigs might fly.

In 1965 or 66 some guy at CMSU had an MGA he was desperate to get rid of.  Or perhaps unloading it on some poor unsuspecting idiot might be more accurate.  I got it for $100.  It had no third gear in the transmission.  It had no side windows and the brakes didn’t work.  What a bargain!  To get it home, my buddy Larry Stoner had a great idea.  We found two old tires and lashed them tightly between the back of his Ford Falcon and the front of the MG and set off, hoping against hope that the two cars wouldn’t part company on the way.  We made it.

Desperate to try it out, Stoner convinced me that if we set off up a steep hill - not too fast - we could kill the engine and coast back home unharmed.  It almost worked.  Unfortunately, we crested the hill and were headed straight for 71 Bypass with no brakes.  Somehow I managed to slow it sufficiently by steering left, then right, then left again so that we regained control, slowed and avoided crashing.  Somehow we pushed it back to the top of the hill and coasted back home.  My interest in English sports cars was born and has  remained with me for the rest of my life.

By hook or crook, I managed to get the MG into good running order. It was a fun car to drive, and I eventually sold it to a dentist from Overland Park, Kansas for $450.  Not bad, not bad at all.  Deducting the cost of fixing it up, I just about broke even.

I got to hear of a guy selling an Austin Healey 3000 Mark III for the not inconsiderable sum of $650.  Now, considering that (provided you could find one ) one of these beauties would set you back $60 000 at least today, that seems an alright deal.  There was a slight problem in that I did not have $650.  But I did have friends. I borrowed $150 from Bosco Cox and $500 from Larry Titus and bought the car.

(addendum - I did pay them back)

It was, and still is the most beautiful car ever made.  The interior was white leather and it was painted a sort of pale blue.  It did have a few problems. Somebody had removed the standard exhaust and replaced it with a modified one from a Chevrolet.  I assume they did this to increase ground clearance, which with the standard exhaust in place  was about nil. 

It was designed to operate in England ( a maritime climate).  It did not really like a Kansas City winter.  To get it started in January you had to spray Easy Start directly into the air filters and pray.  Having started, it would not go far with the standard radiator configuration.  Cardboard must be inserted behind the grille to block air intake or the heater would not put out even lukewarm air and the engine would only run under protest and the temperature gauge would not move from zero.  With limited ground clearance I eventually broke a rear spring, driver’s side.  Perhaps with a hoist you could get enough clearance to remove the rear spring shackle.  I had to borrow Pa Hall’s acetylene torch to cut the spring free.  Me and Bobby Hall used the whole cylinder of gas to get it done. Pa Hall was not all that pleased. 

I used to take my mother shopping or up to the laundromat at 39th and Lee’s Summit road.  The Heally had no glove box, just a small parcel shelf where I would dump my extraneous paperwork.  I picked up Mother and was headed back home along 39th street when I noticed that she was attempting to rifle through some of my stuff.  She dropped something on the floor, I reached down to retrieve it, and when  I looked up, every butthole in front of me had stopped for some guy turning left.  I glanced at the solid line of cars in front.   I looked right - a solid telephone pole.  I slammed the Healey into first, stood on the brakes and went under the back of a Chevy station wagon. Mother smacked her head on the windscreen. (there were no seatbelts in those days).  I got out to survey the damage.  The radiator had been pushed back about eight inches,  The passenger side fender (wing) was a bit crumpled.  The Chevy sustained no damage at all and the guy was kind enough to depart with no more questions. A passing copper asked if he could help and provided me with a tire tool which I used to lever the radiator away from the fan blades and eventually limp home.  Who ever said the Independence police were a bunch of asshol**!

The Old Man came out to assess the damage. He, quite rightly in my view, decided that although the law required that you have two headlights, it did not specify where they were to be mounted.  So we simply bolted one to the crumpled wing.  Job’s a good’un!  The fact that it pointed skyward seemed of little consequence, according to the OM.

The next problem to overcome was the squashed radiator mounts. The OM had an idea.  At that point I should have bailed, but unfortunately did not.

He got a chain from the garage and tied one end to the radiator mounts (with the radiator removed) and the other end to the back of his milk truck.  He reasoned that if we started the Healey, put it in reverse and slipped the clutch we could generate enough force to pull the mounts forward a few inches.

Rather like Hitler’s decision to hold the panzers outside Gravelines allowing for the miracle at Dunkirk, this plan had the distinct disadvantage in that it was crap.

I got in the Healey whilst the OM was busy attaching the chain to the radiator mounts at the front.  In my defence, I distinctly heard him say start it up, so I did.

Without the radiator in place, his hand was still near the fan blades.  He somehow managed to neatly slice the tips of his fingers longitudinally.  This is not even remotely funny in any sense of the word.  But, as he had managed to do exactly the same thing to himself whilst doing what he called “monkeying around” with the milk truck not three days before:  therefore I had to laugh.

He was not amused and grabbed the nearest implement with which to inflict the maximum damage upon me and charged.  I can still see the raised wooden 2x4 inches from my head as I went from zero to sixty in a record time for a human being.  I would have easily beaten Usain Bolt in getting away from the wrath that was descending upon me.

I hid out in Bosco’s woods for three days with my Mom providing food after the OM left for work. 

I got a job with the Southland Corporation, who own the 7 Eleven stores.  I was doing OJT at a store in Grandview, Mo., and I was using the big Healey for daily transport.  This was problematic, as it had developed some annoying habits. When I had the requisite cash I would take it to a specialist and they would tune it to perfection.  It ran beautifully - for about two months, then it got sick and would struggle to outperform a horse and buggy. There was this party at the Hall’s place and I was trying to get there in a hurry.  This involved some danger, which at my tender age I confess not to have considered.  Getting back to Independence was more or less a straight shot down 71 Bypass (now 291), so I developed a cunning tactic.  The Healey would run fairly well as long as you kept the revs up at about 2000 r.p.m (in overdrive).  Let the revs drop below this and it was sick as a dog and getting it back up to any kind of speed was near impossible. I would keep the revs and 

speed up and if anyone was in my way I simply floored it and passed them.  This worked well if there were no hills and no traffic coming from the other direction.

I can distinctly remember cresting a hill flat out at about 80 and swerving to pass a VW Beetle only to find another small car (God was looking after me that day) coming from the other direction.  We passed three abreast (it’s a two lane highway) at an astronomical closing speed.  The Beetle, and I hope this guy did it on purpose, got as far left as he could - I was in the middle and a car was close aboard on the right. I regret I did not see what kind it was, but it must have been small-ish, for even at a closing speed of (say 150 m.p.h.) it flashed past and no crash happened.  The age of miracles was not indeed over.

I remember getting 5 or 6 miles down the road and shaking so badly that I had to slow to about 30 and eventually pull over.  It was only then that I realised how lucky I was to be alive.  I limped on.  I turned down 39th street going East past Lee’s Summit Road when I ran out of gas.

I called somebody who was at the party,  left the Healey off the road as far as I could and joined the party and consumed more than a few beers.

Next day I went to get it and discovered that overnight some butthol**s had come over the hill - probably drunk, and ploughed into the back of it.

It was a mess and there was no-one to sue for damages.

We managed to get it home and I got my insurance company estimator to come out and have a look at it.  It’s a write-off, he said.  You simply can’t argue with these numpties, so they gave me a hundred bucks and took it away to that great Healey graveyard in the sky.

What a waste.  And, what’s worse, because I had no camera at the time (yes, before digital images were a million for less than a penny cameras were in short supply) I have no record of it ever existing.

What a waste