Last revised: 26-1-2009

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Car of the Month - November 2007

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Healey_SR_Le_Mans_1968

Healey SR Le Mans - Group 6 sports prototype - manufactured in 1968

The name of Donald Healey was immortalized by the Austin Healey, one of the most popular British sportscars of the 1950s and 1960s, and of course by its smaller brother, the Austin Healey Sprite. But Healey has meant so much more than that to British sportscar manufacture. This former rally driver and technical director of Triumph started the manufacture of cars under his own name in 1946 and rapidly gained a reputation for creating attractive, high quality performance cars.
Apart from cars for normal road use Healey constructed a varied range of competition cars which helped to promote the company's commercial products. One of the most classic of these was the Healey Silverstone model, a versatile 2-seater sportscar with cycle wings in which you could drive to the circuit and then easily converted into a competitive racing car. It was made from 1949 till 1951 and marked the beginning of Healey's long term involvement in long-distance races like the Le Mans 24 Hours race in France. For races like this the Silverstone was fitted with powerful 6-cylinder engines by American manufacturer Nash and this practice lead to the Nash-Healey luxury sportscar in 1950, the first Healey model which reached wider international acclaim.
The American market promised a huge potential for selling British sportscars and so Healey set out to create a model specifically aimed at this market. It was based on mass produced Austin A90 components while its body showed resemblance with the original Nash-Healey, a model which was continued with a new Pininfarina designed body. This new car was named the Healey Hundred (after its guaranteed top speed of 100 mph) and introduced in 1952. Austin management was immediately taken with this design and after Healey had produced about 50 of these cars Austin secured the rights and took over production. This was the beginning of the big Austin Healey and more or less the end for Healey as a manufacturer.
Even so Healey continued to construct for and enter cars in long-distance races. Consecutive entries in the important Le Mans races consisted usually of Austin Healey and Austin Healey Sprite based specials but when the production of the big Healey was stopped at the end of the 1960s and the Sprite specials generated too little attention for the Healey name, Donald and his son Geoff decided to create a sports prototype racer which could go for the top honours. In 1967 and in total secrecy a completely new design was made for a car in the Group 6 class, with the help of BMC and an assortment of other British companies. This project was aptly named "Sub Rosa", which means as much as "confidential" and was abbreviated to SR.
When the Healey SR was introduced in 1968 it came as quite a shock to the motoring press: here was a state-of-the-art, mid-engined and appealing sports prototype from a British outfit by then regarded as being very conservative. The SR was solely made to compete in the Le Mans race and based on a sheet steel platform chassis fitted with a light weight alloy ("Birmabright") body and powered by a 2-litre Coventry Climax V8 Formula 1 engine producing 245 hp @ 9000 rpm. It attracted a lot of publicity and attention but unfortunately lack of development resulted in an early retirement in the Le Mans race. In 1969 it was entered again, with a number of revisions, but again it didn't succeed to finish the race. This spelled the end for the SR and in 1970 the car was sold and disappeared into obscurity.

The Healey SR turned up in Australia in the 1990s where it was completely restored and converted to street legal. It's original Coventry Climax engine was replaced by a more mundane Oldsmobile V8 small-block unit (which was used by Healey for testing purposes in the SR). In more recent years it made its way back to Europe. Though almost forgotten this remarkable car shows a different side of Healey: as a constructor of contemporary racing cars, a side now totally overshadowed by the fame and popularity of the Austin Healey sportscars. This adds even more depth to the legend.

© André Ritzinger, Amsterdam, Holland

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