while i was teaching basic flying school in selma, alabama i discovered that
lots of the student pilots loved the british sport cars. i was pretty handy
mechanically and so i bought a few mgb's, mga's and even a fiat and fixed them
up to sell. looking in the birmingham paper for sport cars i saw an
austin-healey for sale. i had never seen one and was not even sure it was a
british sport car, but my buddy said to get it if the price was right. had a
blown engine, but i went up to bham and liked what i saw and towed it home.
rebuilt the engine for a fe hundreds bucks and drove it for a year and got
offered about 3 times what i had in it. sold it to a friend who still has it.
bought another healey in sad shape in montgomery and fixed it up and drove it
till they closed the base. took it to florida for f-4 school and then drove
it to las vegas where i used it as a daily driver. they were both bj8's, so
when i saw a bj8 in the paper for sale, i went over to look at it. it had
just been repainted and the neighbor kid had used it for a rock throwing
target. had dents all over the side and back. bought it and spent a winter
taking out dents and repainting and minor mechanical stuff. got sent back to
alabama for school and used it for my daily driver, since it was the only car
i had there. left my 65 with my brother and my 66 with a friend when i got
assigned to spain. my brother decided he had to have a healey and claimed
squatter's rights to the 65. when i got assigned to germany, i brought my
66bj8 over there and joined the german austin-healey club, where i had a great
time and drank a lot of beer. had the car shipped back to states after i
retired from usaf and took it to vancouver, wa where i did a major restoration
on it about 7 years ago. i now have it and a bn6 that i am in the process of
restoring. my next goal is to get a 100. healeymanjim
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