Lot 623: 1956 Austin-Healey 100 Roadster

In creating his new sports car, Donald Healey followed a well-tried formula: that of combining a relatively large, under-stressed engine with a lightweight, nimble chassis. The result was the Austin-Healey 100 and the start of a noble dynasty. First seen at the 1952 London Motor Show, where it overshadowed Triumph’s prototype TR2, the sensational new ‘Healey Hundred’ drew admiring crowds, thereby ensuring that the design, one of a number under consideration by the newly formed British Motor Corporation, was the one taken up for production. Healey’s new sports car used the 2,660cc four-cylinder engine and running gear of the unsuccessful and soon to be axed Austin Atlantic. Austin boss Leonard Lord liked the Hundred and bought the rights from Donald Healey at the Show, thus ensuring that demand for the car, which far exceeded Healey’s production capacity, could be met. North America had been Healey’s intended market from the project’s conception, and his new baby duly passed its first tests there with flying colours, winning the Grand Premier Award at the Miami World’s Fair and being voted international Show Car of the Year at the New York Show in 1953. Coincidentally with its debut appearance in London, a road test of the Healey Hundred published in Autosport magazine revealed that the car really did live up to its name, the inimitable John Bolster having driven the test car along the Jabbeke autoroute in Belgium, clocking a mean maximum of 106mph.
This example’s accompanying BMIHT production certificate confirms that it is an original, right-hand drive UK model despatched new to dealers Mann Egerton. Purchased by its late owner in 1992 and restored, ‘URT 7’ was a concours winner at the International Healey Show in 1993 and since that occasion has been kept in air-conditioned storage. Re-commissioned immediately prior to this sale, the vehicle is offered with current road fund licence, MoT to August 2006 and Swansea V5.