Re: Austin-Healey 100M auction on BAT!
I am with Editor_Reid on this - I read somewhere from a former factory employee (maybe John Wheatley) that only the customers they liked got the M wired on.
Much appreciate the endorsement, only ... that's not what I said. I reject the idea that the little letter Ms were given to favored customers.
How many 100M buyers picked up their new 100M at the Donald Healey Motor Company? Uh, about zero. The Donald Healey Motor Company is where the cars were made into 100M models, but they were then shipped out to various destinations. OK, maybe a couple were picked up there, but that would be the rare exception. That was where they were made into 100M models, not where they were sold.
Also, I bought a 100M from the original owner. It had languished for months in a US distributor's stock and was certainly not a car bought by a favored customer. It was just a car that was shipped to a US port and went into a distributor's stock, and they had a hard time selling it because by the time it got to the USA the 100-Six was available and everyone wanted the new model and the 100 and 100M were by then day-old mashed potatoes. However, the car had the M.
Those little letter Ms were just something the Donald Healey Motor Company made and added, and if they ran out for awhile, cars got shipped out without them. There are examples of original 100M models without them, although it appears that most 100M models did have them.