General seat belt awareness and availability parallelled the Austin Healey's
life fairly closely. A page-by-page, month-by-month search through Road and
Track shows not a single reference to seat belts anywhere in the extensive
Christmas (accessory) Showcase December 1953 issue.
Marion Weber's MG Mitten company begins including nylon "safety belts" in her
ads towards the end of 1954. Three colours (no black). They were a pricey
item at $ 19.50 / pr, the same price as a finned aluminum valve cover. A
convertible top cost $ 29.50 at the time. Military supplier Mareco of
California offered belts both in nylon and cheaper cotton ("as used by TWA")
shortly after. BAP/ Geon offered racing harnesses, but we're talking general
public awareness of belts here.
Leslie Irvin designed a seat belt for Barney Oldfield in 1922. His company,
the Irvin Air Chute company (of which he lost control) supplied a great many
of the early seat belts for both US and European makes. Corvettes offered
them as dealer-installed options in 1956. Deranged Corvette originality nuts
seek out these early Irvin belts and pay $ 500 for a NOS lap belt set:
http://www.wernersparts.com/Seat%20Belts.htm . Or repros can be had from
places like Andover Restraints, with either early polished aluminum buckles or
later chrome ones. Austin-Healey began fitting mounting plates with the 3000
Mark II model.
As well as Irvin (with its distinctive parachute logo), British cars used
Britax brand belts and the wonderful fall-apart Kangol Magnet type. The
earliest Kangol Magnet belts of the fifties had a rounded cast lifting tab
made of a dark metal, which was replaced by the familiar black plastic lifting
tab with a logo sticker, in the early sixties. My examples of the very early
Kangol type all have a webbing of a distinctively British rectangular pattern,
are all in a silver-grey colour, and incorporate detailed plastic sleeving and
snaps.
The majority of vintage belts I've rescued from old British sportscars tend to
have an American coarse pebble-grain webbing with no visible "stripes". Most
with chrome buckles, except for the odd off-brand. A great variety of colours
was available to match the upholstery, and this webbing could still be found
new fairly recently.
Old period seatbelt webbing is distinctive in being thick and coarse-grained.
Virtually all modern belts, including the lap-belt repros, are now made of the
familiar thin, smooth, four-stripe type, which became necessary when the
inertia-reel belts (invented in 1963) required tight packing and a smooth
sliding action.
So the static belt pretty much followed the production life of the Austin
Healey.
Best
Peter
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