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Celebrity Healeys

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<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Don DAMON</span></span> $96.6 million winner in Kansas Powerball lottery.

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One of the surprises purchased by Damon was this nicely restored silver-blue Austin Healey roadster. "I didn't look at the engine until later ... and found out it had a 302 Ford under the hood," Damon said.

Read more here: https://www.kansas.com/2011/08/30/1994886/damons-dreams.html#storylink=cpy
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">KK DOWNING</span></span>

Two cars owned by former Judas Priest lead guitarist KK Downing have gone under the hammer for a total of nearly £63,000.

The vehicles owned by Mr Downing, who lives near Bridgnorth, were two of 67 cars sold at the auction.

Auctioneers Brightwells said the musician’s ‘highly original 1966 Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII sparking an intense bidding war before finally going to a Belgian buyer for £35,750’.

Read more: https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2011/.../#ixzz1hseHxCcp
 
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<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Rod STEWART</span></span>


"I never thought any of this would happen to me, are you kidding? All I wanted in those days was a £300 sports car, an Austin-Healey Sprite. The only thing I wanted out of the music business was this car."

https://www.superseventies.com/ssrodstewart.html
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Cheryl TIEGS</span>
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Car She Learned To Drive In and First Car Bought
Tiegs was born in Minnesota, but her family moved to Alhambra, California, when she was five. Her dad taught her how to drive in a manual 1961 Austin-Healy.
"My dad bought me my first car, the Austin-Healy. He said, " Are you sure you want this car?" It was a used, a convertible, and it was burgundy. It was a very sexy car. And it was so hot in many ways; it attracted so many guys. For some reason around the foot pedals, it got hot and there was nothing you could do about it."

Read more: https://www.trucktrend.com/features/consu...l#ixzz1hvPjIpLv
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Anne RANDALL</span></span> Playboy's Miss May 1967

When the aspiring actress feels the need to unwind, she'll hop into her Austin-Healey Sprite for a spin along Los Angeles' famed freeways. "Only one complaint about the drivers down here," Miss Randall observes. "They sometimes can't resist passing other cars on the right. Of course, I shouldn't protest too loudly; I've smacked up my car twice since I've been here. How? I was passing someone on the right."
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Dr. Hillary JONES</span></span> of UK ITV

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'I've learnt that having an interest in vintage cars can be very financially draining,' Dr Hilary Jones of ITV's Daybreak told The Telegraph in October 2010. 'Ten years ago I bought two vintage cars, for which I had always had a weakness. But I lost a load of money on the privilege of owning them.

'The first was a 1925 Fiat Doctor's Coupe, which I lost about £5,000 on, and the second was a 1963 Austin-Healey Sprite [above] and I lost about £1,500 on it. Of course, these types of car cost a lot of money to maintain and, while they are expensive to run, you don't use them very often...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/perso...s.html?image=12
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Heinz MEIXNER</span></span>

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WEST BERLIN, West Germany — Just after midnight on May 5, 1963, a red Austin Healey Sprite approached the barrier on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie. The top of the sports car was down, the windshield was missing, and at the wheel was Heinz Meixner, 20, an Austrian lathe operator.

He showed his passport to the East German guard, who waved him on to the customs shed. But instead of stopping for inspection, Meixner gunned the engine, skidded around the slalom course of barriers and--ducking his head--whizzed blindly under the three-foot-high steel-lift barrier and into West Berlin
Behind the seat was his East German fiancee, Margarete Thurau, and in the trunk her 48-year-old mother.


<span style="color: #FF6666">SMART THINKING - Put the MiL in the trunk when the Stasi opens up with the machine guns!</span>
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF6666">Peter REVSON</span>
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THAT MILLIONAIRE COSMETIC-heir, international-set playboy jazz wouldn't bother me except that it implies I don't take racing seriously," Peter Revson says. And the 28 year-old bachelor with homes in London and New York does appear to be a prototype playboy until you find there's a tough, dedicated professional race driver under the dark good looks.

"Cars always turned me on," he says. "I had a '58 Austin-Healey which I never raced, and got started mostly in Formula Juniors. But I wanted something reliable that I could race every weekend so I got rid of the Taraschi and bought a Morgan, With the Morgan I had a lot of good races with Mark Donohue's Elva Courier in '60 and '61."

https://www.sportscars.tv/Newfiles/Revsonp.html
 
One of Barbara Walters' first modeling gigs. I don't think she even drove at the time:

~LINK~

"Featuring Donald Healey's beautiful new Austin Healey 100. The shot of the Austin Healey 100 was taken in front of the Tavern on the Green in Central Park, New York City.

Seated in the car is <span style="font-weight: bold">Barbara Walters</span>.

At 23, Barbara writes and produces 'Ask the Camera,' a 15-minute show on TV station WNBT. The format of the show is simple but effective. Barbara receives letters from listeners asking all sorts of questions. (Typical examples: 'Where do storks live?' 'What do Eskimos eat?') She picks three questions for each show, digs into NBC's vast library for the answers, and -- with Sandy Becker acting as MC -- presents the questions and answers on the air. Barbara majored in philosophy at Sarah Lawrence. Before becoming a writer-producer, she worked at her father's well-known Latin Quarter in New York. "

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aeronca65t said:
One of Barbara Walters' first modeling gigs. I don't think she even drove at the time:

~LINK~

"Featuring Donald Healey's beautiful new Austin Healey 100. The shot of the Austin Healey 100 was taken in front of the Tavern on the Green in Central Park, New York City.

Seated in the car is <span style="font-weight: bold">Barbara Walters</span>.

At 23, Barbara writes and produces 'Ask the Camera,' a 15-minute show on TV station WNBT. The format of the show is simple but effective. Barbara receives letters from listeners asking all sorts of questions. (Typical examples: 'Where do storks live?' 'What do Eskimos eat?') She picks three questions for each show, digs into NBC's vast library for the answers, and -- with Sandy Becker acting as MC -- presents the questions and answers on the air. Barbara majored in philosophy at Sarah Lawrence. Before becoming a writer-producer, she worked at her father's well-known Latin Quarter in New York. "

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Click to expand...

This is an extremely interesting Healey, generally known as "No 2", the earliest known surviving pre-production 100 and formerly owned by one of my greatest Healey friends, Don Paye. Barbara Walters was never an owner, but the pictures definitely harken back to the times when Healeys were connected to the stars of the day.
 
Editor_Reid said:
HealeyRick said:
This is an extremely interesting Healey, generally known as "No 2", the earliest known surviving pre-production 100 and formerly owned by one of my greatest Healey friends, Don Paye.
Click to expand...

Just curious: who owns it now?
Click to expand...

Sorry, Idon't know who the new owner is.
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Jim CROCKETT</span></span> Publisher of Guitar Player magazine

"... he struck me as one of those guys that used to appear in the "What sort of man reads Playboy?" ads. He drove a Mercedes , later a red Austin-Healey 3000 with wire wheels. He was a scuba diver and a jazz drummer who dug abstract paintings and fine wines." Guitar Player
 
<span style="color: #FF0000"><span style="font-weight: bold">William F. NOLAN</span></span> Science Fiction writer - co-author of "Logan's Run"

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John Tomerlin's Mother, her son, Charles Beaumont, and a trophy winning William F. Nolan in 1957.


Nolan remembers, "Tomerlin raced his Porsche and Chuck, who began with an MG-TC, also had bought a Porsche Speedster, while I had a British Austin-Healey. We used to stage illegal races on abandoned roads, but John was actually competing in 'real' race events by then. The sport became a huge passion for [us], and we attended sports car races at various circuits around Southern California." Nolan recalls with particular clarity watching a young movie star named James Dean racing his Porsche a few months before the actor's untimely death in a highway crash. https://www.rodserling.com/csorcerers.htm
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Russ HEATH</span></span> Artist of Playboy's "Little Annie Fanny" cartoon

"RH: Yeah. He had a neat little sports car. It was an Austin-Healey. I later had an Austin-Healey Sprite. That's the one with the bug headlights. '59 was the only year they had those headlights on the hood like that.

Prof: That must have been a fun little way to get around.

RH: Yeah, it was really a lot of fun. People would go by and ask, "Do you get in that or do you go belly-whopping on it?" https://www.wtv-zone.com/silverager/interviews/heath_2.shtml
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Harlan ELISON</span></span> Science fiction and television writer

As the Group prospered, a young writer named Harlan Ellison arrived in Hollywood fresh from a stint as co-editor of Chicago's Rogue magazine, for which he had purchased the work of Johnson, Tomerlin, and other Group members. He was also friendly with Chad Oliver, whom he visited many times in Texas. But his greatest closeness was with Beaumont, whom he got to know when Beaumont would come to Chicago on business for Playboy or to auto race. In fact, Ellison says, "It was Chuck who got me into sports cars. I bought a gun-metal blue Austin-Healey... and almost got killed! Chuck always laughed at the way I raced. He called me a leadfoot." Ellison's career as a sports car racer was mercifully brief. https://www.rodserling.com/csorcerers.htm
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Klaus VOORMAN</span></span> bassist with Manfred Mann and designer of Beatles album covers

" I drove around a lot. I was into sports cars and Klaus very kindly let me drive his Austin-Healey Sprite. We've got some photographs of Paul and me in it ..." -George Harrison
The Beatles Anthology

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