Super-rare £650,000 Austin-Healey up for auction
The race: the 12 Hours of Sebring; the year, 1954, just two years after Austin-Healey came into being. And the car? That was the 100S. Driven by Lance Macklin and George Huntoon, it was up against works teams from Lancia and Aston Martin, their drivers including Juan-Manuel Fangio and Carroll Shelby. In fact Sir Stirling Moss won the race – driving an Osca – but in a major coup for the fledgling British firm, the Austin-Healey came third.
Adopting the “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” principle, Austin-Healey quickly put into production a run of 55 100Ss to mark the success, all right-hand-drive despite being aimed primarily at the US market. Just four cars were reserved for the UK, one being the car you see here which Bonhams is going to be auctioning in London on 4th December.
Well known by its registration plate EVV 106, it is a car you might have seen racing at Goodwood – at the Revival in recent years or perhaps at its competition debut at the Motor Circuit in March 1955. Finishing second, it was to be the start of this Healey’s successful club racing career, with famous pedallers including Tony Lanfranchi.
The 100S has its roots in the Healey Hundred which made its debut at the Earls Court Motor Show in 1952. Austin’s Leonard Lord was so impressed by the car that he bought the rights to it and overnight changed its name to the Austin-Healey 100.
Using the mechanicals of the Austin Atlantic, its recipe of a muscular two-seater with purist sportscar appeal at an affordable price went down well with Americans who were always its main target. They were impressed by its torquey 2,660cc four-cylinder engine; It might have had only 90PS (67kW) but in such a light car it offered a top speed over 100mph – quite a bit over the ton in fact.
At Bonneville Salt Flats in 1953 Donald Healey and George Eyston drove the 100 into the record books with a top speed of 143mph in a specially tuned model. Just as impressive, a 100 straight off the showroom floor managed an average speed over 24 hours of 104mph.
The competition S version like the car in the Bonhams sale took things a lot further with disc brakes, aluminium cylinder head, four-speed gearbox and lightweight aluminium body with its signature cut-down Perspex windscreen. The 100S weighed 891kg and could call on 130PS (97kW), enough for 130mph performance.
According to Bonhams, the 100S was the 1950s’ most accessible, most appealing and in many cases the most successful club-racing car available to any aspiring racing driver – claims to fame as relevant today in all the great historic race meetings for which this super machine would certainly be eligible (it has all the right racing papers up to 2027).
It is thought only 38 of the original 55 cars survive, making the 100S among the rarest and most sought-after of all Healeys – no surprise then that Bonhams expects it to make between £550-650,000 when the hammer drops.
Austin-Healey
Bonhams
For Sale
