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Re: Healey Triumphs (was Re: My mistake)

To: jonmac <jonmac@ndirect.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Healey Triumphs (was Re: My mistake)
From: Scott Fisher <sefisher@cisco.com>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 16:24:17 -0800
jonmac wrote (responding to me, in double >>s):
> 
> > his navigator were stuck on a level crossing in an
> > impenetrable fog in Denmark, 
> 
> You're a bit too far north-east, Scott. Of course, DMH might
> well have been in Denmark but if coming home after the
> event, he was certainly taking the long way round.

I've always thought so too -- and I can't remember where I came up with
the impression it was Denmark.

> My understanding was the accident occurred in France 

Much more likely.  Wonder why I got the idea it was Denmark.  Maybe he
was picking up Anders Ditlev Clausager on the way. :-)

> Seemingly the train won at the point of
> intersect.

They always do...

> > DMH was perhaps not as Machiavellian as
> > Enzo Ferrari 
> 
> Or was it not something a little more mundane and to do with
>  the 'sordid matter of coin' - or the lack of it?

It could also be said that there was a larger selection of suitable
sporting engines in England after WWII. :-)  Seriously -- that's it, I'm
sure.  The costs to develop, tool, and produce an engine must have been
prohibitive; the evidence is there under the hoods of Morgans, Ginettas,
Gilberns, TVRs (until recently), and of course, Swallow Dorettis.  Does
anyone know how much TVR spent to develop the engines they're using now?

(It dawns on me that I don't really *know* the origins of Ferrari in the
first few years after WWII; I know what the first Ferrari to race in the
U.S. looked like, but not much about how it came to have a proprietary
12-cylinder engine so shortly after the devastation of northern Italy. 
So my speculation about the relative Machiavellian-ness of DMH and Il
Commendatore was just that, speculation from what I've read and heard
about the two men's personalities.  One of my regrets from the years I
spent editing the Austin-Healey Club newsletter in the late '80s -- even
greater than my regret that I didn't buy and keep that black over red
'55 BN-1, it really wasn't *that* rusty -- was that I never got to meet
Donald Healey on one of his trips to the U.S.  I spoke with many club
members who had nothing but good to say about his friendliness, his
humor, his energy, and something approaching amazement at the almost
cult-like devotion that American fans of British sports cars bring to
these vehicles.)

> But AC was an entirely different and much smaller
> organisation than BMC.

It must have been -- hence my suggestion about a good idea (British
chassis, V8 power, like a couple of Triumphs I can think of) requiring
the right audience (a company that would go for it).  I remember reading
Carroll Shelby's autobiography, some 30 years ago, and recall that
Shelby had originally pitched the idea for a British sports-racer with
U.S. power to Chevrolet, and the idea was shot down by GM as well.  They
had the Corvette, and Jim Hall was getting some back-door assistance
with the Chaparral; why spread the resources any thinner?

> It is well known that BMC secretly cherished the possibility
> of using a 1220 Climax or something similar in the Sprite -

I've seen pictures of at least one, with a somewhat homely (IMHO) alloy
body and a Climax engine -- I *think* it was an 1100cc unit with twin
Webers, but I'm away from my books.  At least, that's what Geoff Healey
described as an experimental "Super Sprite".

Something else I've read: about 1965 or '66, Honda tested the waters for
bringing the S600 and S800 convertibles into the U.K.  Supposedly the
handling was "diabolical," but the engines were little high-revving
terrors, with dual overhead cams and short strokes that gave them very
rapid acceleration for the displacement.  There was concern from BMC
that this would eat heavily into Spridget sales, so the Healeys brought
in Eddie Maher, their cylinder-head guru, to come up with something to
make the 1098cc Spridgets quicker.  Geoff Healey's book claims that the
resulting prototype was not only faster than the Honda, but faster than
the MGB as well -- with the result that the Maher cylinder head was
scrapped, because U.S. sports car buyers were still snapping up
Spridgets and Bs rapidly enough without having to spend money on
improving them.  

So... was there a corresponding Spitfire-based response to the threat
(never realized in any volume) of the Honda?  Any "what might have been"
stories from that time?

> Anyone who has studied Leonard Lord's general
> character make-up would soon realise that here was a man who
> rarely deviated from his own opinion - no matter how
> convincing the alternative evidence might have been to the
> contrary. 

*Very* well phrased.

Lord's statement "Well, *that* bloody lot can go for a start" (in
reference to closing the Competitions department at Abingdon in 1933 or
34, when he took over the company that owned M.G.) earned him a
permanent Black Hat in my catalog of historical personalities, even if I
encountered the statement only in print, 50 years later, when I was
falling in love with my first British sports car (or at least the first
one I owned -- the falling in love part happened decades before...)  

> Undoubtedly Lord was a brilliant production engineer but a
> little lacking in certain other desirable qualities.

There's that celebrated British understatement again. :-)

I don't know how often people say this, or how often we should -- but it
is such a privilege to be able to converse directly with those who were
there, who brought about (or at least witnessed first-hand) all the
things that the rest of us only learn from marque histories and magazine
reprints.  I know and believe what my hands tell me when I work on the
cars, but when it comes to their history, why they are the way they are,
I can only read, infer, and surmise.  Even the most careful book can
only say the things the author chooses to put into it, and as we've
discussed about certain authors, some few have been known to revise the
facts to suit their own egos.  Being able to converse with those who
were there, whether it's Paul Richardson's hilarious stories about
"Roop" or insight into Len Lord's uniquely effective personality, is a
treasure.  Thank you, thank you.

--Scott Fisher

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