The Garage » austin-healey

Autocross In Car from a rotary powered Sprite

Gary Grant — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:27:16 +0000

Long time readers will recall the video we posted years ago of a 3 rotor Bugeye Sprite attacking an autocross course. I still go back and visit that clip often, as I just love to hear the wail of the wankel!

Today we have Jeff Kiesel in his Bugeye that has a turbo rotary that puts out a whopping 370 horsepower at the rear wheels! For those who don’t know, curb weight on a stock Bugeye was around 1,800 lbs. Factor in the light weight rotary and I’ll guess that this car has a floppy bonnet, Jeff’s ride might weigh somewhere around 1,500 lbs. That is a pretty wicked power to weight ratio!

Sit back, crank the volume and hold on to the chair.

Vintage racing Healey on maximum attack

Gary Grant — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:51:19 +0000

While attempting to convey the glorious sound of a big Healey that won the heart of our man Allan, we showed a quick video yesterday of a short drive in an Austin Healey road car. Some of us found that video a bit less than inspiring. Gary Faules went hunting and came up with this incredible segment of Mark Schmidt in his Healey 3000 Mk I.

This is no country drive mind you. This is the first 2 laps of the European Historic Grand Prix at Zolder in 2005 and Schmidt absolutely decimates the field when he starts from behind. Off the line, listen to the incredible revs needed to launch the car with its full race clutch. You can actually see the front end lift and the car squirming as it fights for traction while it leaves all the small bore cars standing still. Talk about asleep at the switch. I swear a couple of them hadn’t even moved when Schmidt went by them. Then, keep an eye out for the Fiat 500 that almost runs him off the road, followed by the Renault Alpine that nearly does the same. Wake up guys, when a faster car starts behind you, you had better be ready for him to go by. At the end of the 2nd lap, no fewer than 29 cars have been passed!

Now this is the sound of an Austin Healey!

Sounds like Shutter Speed: Austin Healey

Gary Grant — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:08:55 +0000

In his Love at First Sight segment of Shutter Speed, Allan De La Plante tells us how the sound of that old Healey added to his infatuation. With all the cool race car sounds around here these days, Allan thought we should bring a little bit of the Healey magic into the place.

Somehow I don’t think that Allan’s white Healey was ever driven as carefully as this one as he blasted around North Bay!

Shutter Speed: Love at first sight

Allan De La Plante — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:09:06 +0000

Before my old man got rid of his Biscayne during his mid-life crisis, I got something I had longed for from the time I first drove his Buick…my driver’s license! It wasn’t a simple task for me to get that special piece of paper. When I went for the 90-day learner’s permit, which was what they gave you as a minimum in those days, I had to take an eye exam. They found one eye lacking. They found I had very little vision in my right eye. Over the years I had never had even one tiny speck of dust that would have forced me to use my right eye only. I just thought everything was normal. It explained a lot of things in my sporting life. I was continuously being blind-sided on my right when I played hockey. I was poor at slalom in skiing. Catching a football was also a problem even though I was a starting wing back on our high school team. Depth perception didn’t exist for me. I believe it also impacted my professional life when I grew up. I saw mono and not in stereo vision as normal people do. I would see exactly what the camera did and what was going to be put down on film. Back to getting the driver’s license. I decided to take the test in a small town south of North Bay where I expected it would be easier. It was. When they asked me to cover my eye for the eye test, I looked through my fingers when my bad eye was needed. The examiner didn’t even look at me. He looked at the chart! It was all manual then and easy to get through the exam with a little cheating. I then did the driving portion of the exam. It was even easier. No stop signs, no traffic lights, no pedestrians. If I could keep it on the road, I had the green light to drive on my own! Needless to say I drove home with my Mother in the passenger seat beaming.

As I said, my Father at the time was going through a mid-life crisis of some kind and just came home one day with a brand new MGB! It was red with a black hard top. It was a beauty! Unbelievable as it may seem, he let me have it once in a while to cruise the main drag of town on some trumped up errand. He knew that I too loved that car. I seldom got it when it counted like a Friday or Saturday night so I was stuck with my Mother’s Anglia. Her car had our store’s name plastered on both sides so getting away with anything was out of the question. My Mother was always getting calls from busy-body telling her that ‘Allan is doing this, or Allan is doing that’. Small towns looked after it’s youth by telephone. Your parents took the word of their neighbours as well so getting away with anything was unlikely. Getting your arse kicked and losing the right to use the car was the usual result of any screw-up’s.

During my final two years of high school I had found a new interest. One day I visited my Father at the local television station where he was now the news director. He gave me a tour and I met the station art director who right away realized this ‘moonie-eyed’ kid was smitten by her looks. She was a tall English woman named Terri Lewis. She was the female version of the famous or infamous Grey Owl. She had dyed her hair jet black. It hung with long thick braids that hung down each side of her head. She often wore buckskins that were beautifully decorated with colourful beads. She was dazzling! I kept appearing over the next few weeks and asking questions so I could just hang around. She soon realized I had a some artistic talent and started to show me what the art department was all about. I was also interested in the photography department as the chief photographer, a curious character by the name of Bill Schorse. He had an off-beat sense of humour, but more importantly he had a very special car…a 1955 Jaguar XK140! It was white with red leather interior. He would drive into the parking lot of the station with his head held high and back. His cap was often pulled down to the goggles he wore when he put the windshield down. The sound of the car was romance in itself. He looked so…so…so English! The car’s note could be heard for miles as he drove up the hill to the tv station. It was out of a dream.

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School was not going so well. I was under suspicion of involvement in a plot to splice ten seconds of a ‘blue film’ into a geography movie that was stored in the audio visual section of the projectionist booth in the school auditorium. I’ll get back to that later. The movie editing and a few other incidents had me on the carpet in the Vice-principal’s office and soon out the door for the rest of the year. A deal was made to allow me to come back and write my grade eleven final exams which I did with some success, but that was the end of my formal education. Less than two weeks after I was out in the spring sunshine I was offered a job by the television station management. It was in the photography department…right under the Jag man! The last thing I wanted to be was a photographer! My Father was a photographer. My half-brother Jim was a photographer. His Father was a photographer. I firmly believe my Mother was into chemicals! I took the job and Bill Schorse began to answer the questions I had about the camera and proper film exposure. I started work, but right away there was a problem. I had no car. I used my Mother’s car for the first while, but that caused a lot of tension at home. Much to my surprise my Father suggested we head to Toronto in the ‘B’ and see what was around on Danforth Avenue. We visited my Grandmother in Port Credit the first night after a long day cruising the lots. She suggested we look at a lot in the town of Clarkson just down the road. The next morning we drove onto the Sports Cars Unlimited lot and got out of the car. My Dad and I started to look around and were fast approached by a young man in a neat shirt and tie. I wasn’t interested in even talking. I had spied my first real love. It was long and low. It had wire wheels with white narrow side walls. It had the most beautifully swept-back windshield. The white paint gleamed in the sun. I could not take my eyes off it. The 1959 Austin Healey 100-6 took my breath away. My Father was also struck by the car’s beauty. The three of us stood there saying little. The salesman didn’t need to. He knew we were awestruck by the car. The car was selling itself. The top was down. It had a black tonneau cover over the passenger compartment. He asked if we’d like to take it for a test drive and I just stood there. My Father asked what the price was and was satisfied with the $999.00 price tag. We had settled on a $500.00 limit, but this was no ordinary car and he wanted it almost as much as I did. When the salesman turned the key there was a loud ticking coming from the trunk. When I inquired I was assured all was well as it was just the fuel pump. The salesman drove the Healey off the lot with me sideways in the little jump seat and Dad neatly tucked in the passenger seat. The salesman drove smoothly through a residential area while the engine warmed up. He then put a lot more ginger into his right foot. Damn it this car could go! The salesman soon pulled the car over and we switched places. I was having the same reaction as I would when I saw a beautiful woman! I needed to settle down. He kept control by telling me to keep the revs down to 2,500. I could melt with the sound and not getting arrested. I remember little about the rest of that day while my Father and the salesman did the paperwork. I wandered around the showroom which held several cars. There was also a Mini in the showroom. It had no interior and had the number ‘850′ on the side. The salesman said it was his race car. There were action pictures of it on the wall of his office. I didn’t realize it then, but we had just bought a car off a future legend of Canadian motor sport! The drive home was uneventful other than one of the rocker panels fell off completely and the other just hung there by one screw. A little ‘bondo’ job had been the car’s makeup to get the young buyer into the mood. It mattered little to me. The car soon made a trip to the body shop to make it sound again. The sound! The sound was better than the XK 140! I loved to go through the gears in any tunnel to get the full effect of the exhaust. My first real love had four tires rather than two legs! She introduced me to a whole new group of friends who like me were mostly misfits. We loved our cars as much as our present and future girlfriends.

Previously: My own wheels

Ed note: For those of you who are too young, or aren’t up on your Canadian motorsports history that salesman was none other than Bill Brack who went on to become one of Canada’s few Grand Prix drivers. Today, Brack operates an advanced driving school in the Toronto area.

Next: The gang – good and bad times

2009 Greenwich Concours d’Elegance: The British

Tom Williams — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 01:35:40 +0000

The Fourteenth Annual Greenwich Concours d’Elegance was held on June 6-7 at Roger Sherman Baldwin Park in Greenwich, CT. Founders and co-chairs Bruce and Genia Wennerstrom hosted an impressive variety of marques, featuring rare, classic, unusual, exotic, and one-off production and race cars.

It is a pleasure to share this delectable mix of devastating machinery with you. So as to not overwhelm you, gentle reader, we will show the cars in separate installments by the car’s nation of origin. Enjoy!

Morgan was the featured marque this year, in celebration of the company’s 100th birthday.

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Classic racing action through the eyes of Paul Chenard

Gary Grant — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:57:02 +0000

If there are two cars that define the spirit of the sports car racing in the Sixties more than any others, they must be the Austin Healey Sprite and the Triumph Spitfire. It might even be safe to say that more racers got their starts in these fun and affordable cars than all of the others combined.

Friend of The Garage, Paul Chenard, was recently commissioned to create this wonderful piece by Mike Gee from British Columbia. That’s Mike leading the way in his Spitfire at Western Speedway on Vancouver Island in 1964. Chasing him, with the inside line, is Dan Sherwood in his brand new Mk II Sprite.

Absolutely the essence of North American racing in the early Sixties!

If you’ve got a favorite photo of your car in action or you’d like to pick up one of Paul’s existing works be sure to visit Automobiliart.com

Wired

Gary Grant — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:19:32 +0000

The car that started it all

Gary Grant — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:23:52 +0000

Like so many other racing addicts, the fever was started with a Bugeye Sprite. In my case though, it wasn’t my own car but my father’s first race car a full 2 years before I was born. The seed was planted though and that propelled Bud on to race with some success over the next few years.

The car is obviously an Austin Healey Sprite, which us North Americans call a Bugeye, while the Brits feel it is more of a Frogeye. It looks like the shot was taken on the pre grid at Mosport, prior to the Formula 1 garages being built. I believe the year was 1965. A bit of success with this car led to the Mark II Sprite that Bud won the first ever Ontario Sports Car racing championship in 1967.

Unfortunately this photo isn’t in the best of shape, but I believe it is the only one of this car.

Celebrating 50 Years of Spridgets

Gary Grant — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:48:22 +0000

The Austin Healey Sprite and MG Midget twins have long been known as Spridgets. From it’s beginning as the Bugeye (frogeye in the UK) in 1958 all the way until the rubber bumper cars of the Eighties, the Spridget has been a favourite of Brit car fans and road racers all over the world. Here in The Garage, Grandpa Bud began his racing career in a Bugeye. He was actually the first ever Ontario Sports Car Racing Champion, winning the Alitalia Trophy driving none other than a Mk II Sprite, way back in 1967. I even made an aborted attempt to restore a 72 Spridget in the late Eighties. I gave up, vowing one day to buy an H-Production Sprite some day. I still don’t have one.

A bunch of the MG and Austin Healey clubs in the UK have gotten together to plan Spridget 50: The Big Party. They are encouraging Spridget owners from around the world to join them on May 18, 2008 in Warwickshire for what promises to be the biggest gathering of the little cars of all time. What a great adventure that would be. Imagine flying your Spridget to Jolly Olde to meet up with all it’s cousins. There will be a ton of British motoring celebs. They haven’t announced any sporting events, but I would be surprised if there isn’t a weekend full of racing somewhere. I wonder if they’ve invited Peter Egan, he of the Return Of The Bugeye.

Full details of the event can be found at the Spridget 50 home page.

Via ClassicRallies.com

Rotary Bugeye Autocross Assault

Gary Grant — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:37:49 +0000

It could be that I’ve been posting a few too many videos here in The Garage these days, but I just keep finding the most incredible things on Youtube.

Here we have a rotary powered Bugeye Sprite taking on a long autocross course. Be sure to crank the speakers loud for this one!

The Garage » austin-healey

Autocross In Car from a rotary powered Sprite

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