PART 2
Both eventually succumbed to the ravages of the salt; however bits and
pieces were known to survive. Decades later Dutch Austin-Healey enthusiast
Wiet Huidekoper in a world wide search located many of these actual parts.
Wiet formed a plan together with well known Australian Austin-Healey expert
Steve Pike of reconstructing the cars and reliving the events of 1954 on the
Bonneville salt.
Steve is a long term Austin-Healey enthusiast and along with his team at
Marsh Classic Restorations has been restoring cars of the marque since the
1970s and enjoys a worldwide reputation as the expert on the 100S.
With access to Geoff Healey's personal records and design drawings as well
as the historic parts both cars are nearing completion and the target is to
debut the endurance car in March 2009 at the Historic races at Phillip
Island, Australia. The body/chassis of the Streamliner has been completed
and from the attached photos looks just stunning. As originally, both cars
will have early versions of the 100S engines. The Endurance car's highly
tuned engine will have an original "angle-faced head" and will be stopped by
an early version of the smaller twin-piston brake callipers that were later
developed for the 100S production racers. As originally the Streamliner will
be supercharged and fitted with a variant of the original David Brown
5-speed gearbox. As the two cars have been reconstructed around the remains
of what has been left, the souls of the 1954 cars have been brought back to
life.
The team behind this most exciting Austin-Healey venture have set-up a
website so that Austin-Healey enthusiasts around the world can keep across
the events as they occur.
The site address is:- <http://www.healeysreturntobonneville.com>
www.healeysreturntobonneville.com
For media information please contact:
Patrick Quinn
Sydney, Australia
publicity@healeysreturntobonneville.com
61 417 673 065
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