• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Celebrity Healeys

Share this page

<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Jay HOOK</span></span> First pitcher to win a game for the NY Mets

Days after the 1961 World Series, Hook and his wife, Joan, were driving back to Evanston so Hook could start another round of classes at Northwestern, when he received some surprising news. “We had this nice little car, an Austin-Healey,” said Hook, whose keen interest in cars and engineering education would later lead him into his post-baseball career. “We heard on the car radio that I had been traded [actually picked in the expansion draft by the Mets https://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=2694&pid=6519
 
<span style="color: #FF0000">Walter Röhrl</span> - rallye world champion

-RezqE4" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"> </embed></object>

Unfortunately I couldn't find a photo of his own red Mk II

"Man kann ein Auto nicht wie ein menschliches Wesen behandeln - ein Auto braucht Liebe" (W.Röhrl)

I try to translate: "You can't treat a car like a human being - a car needs love."


Walter ist my favourite car racer of all time and you can find a lot of his great runs in the web like his Pikes Peak victory 1987: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyainn4B-UE

To all Healeyaners the best wishes for the year 2012 from Austria!

Alex
 
qyh46o.jpg



Bella Darvi and an Austin Healey 100 / 4: The Polish-French actress Bella Darvi posing on the bonnet of the British roadster before the Carlton Hotel in Cannes. According to rumors, she was a flirt of Monaco's Prince Rainier. Der Spiegel
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF6666">Julian LENNON</span></span>

9 April 1985 on David Letterman:

Ah Tell me about your - you - you collect cars, you like cars is that - maybe not collect them, but you have cars.... a hobby.



Yeah. I just like old English sports cars.

What kind of cars do you have.

No. I just have one car at the moment.

What kind.

It's a Austin-Healey-Frog-Eyed-Sprite.

A Frog-Eyed-Sprite.

Sprite. Yeah.

Frog-Eyed meaning the little - the lights - the lamps are up...

The little lamps - the lights - stick up. Yeah.

They don't make those anymore, Austin-Healey at all do they?

No. No, I think they finished in the early to mid-sixties.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I got one.

What year?

57

And what do you do with it? You drive it around? Can you go nuts in it?

Um, well - I just take it for cruises in the countryside.

Yeah. Do you have a license? a driver's license?

No! (Everyone including Jules cracks up laughing)

Now uh.. you understand the situation here if you enjoy automobiles and you don't have a license. Now why don't you have a license?

Well at the time being I haven't had much chance to get one.

Yeah

But... No. No. I have provisional which allows me to go with a passenger that has a license so I'm okay. https://www.heyjules.com/valotte/tv/1985apr9letterman.html
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Buzz ALDRIN</span></span>

But the new US Top Gear that premiered tonight on History Channel had Buzz Aldrin on and when they went through his list of cars he's owned one was a Bugeye. Forget exactly what he said but it was along the lines of a fun nimble little car that was great to drive until he got to the cobblestones of Boston. https://www.mgexperience.net/archive/bugeye_inspired_the_moon_rover/1611694
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Bruce JENNER</span></span> -almost

"I thought my first car was going to be an Austin-Healey Sprite, but I have a tragic story relating to that car. My dad taught me how to drive in Tarrytown, New York , in a grocery store parking lot.
I was 15, turning 15, and he had a little Austin-Healey "bugeye" Sprite. It was red with white stripes. And it was the coolest little car; a convertible. It was a four speed, so he taught me how to drive a stick shift down in the parking lot. That was probably 3 or 4 months before I got my license. Of course I snuck it out a few times when he wasn't around. We lived in an apartment complex and I drove it around the complex and never got caught. My sister got caught because she bumped another car, but that's another story.The day I got my license, my dad sold the car." My First Car
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Jack BOYLE</span></span> Red Skelton's choreographer

JIM FOX reminded us of the CBS Sports Car Club when
he wrote: In the mid to late 50’s, CBS had a very active
sports car club. At one point there were about 60 members.
A number of members raced their cars at various
tracks around Southern California and elsewhere. Pete
Aumier, TV Engineering, raced his MGA; Jack Boyle,
Red Skelton’s choreographer, raced his Austin Healy
100S; Jim Fox, Special Effects raced his Jaguar KX 120;
Jim Mathews, Columbia Square, raced his Jaguar KX
120; John Peters, TV Art Department, raced his Porsche
550 Spyder; Bob Will, TV Publicist, raced his Jaguar KX
120 and there were a few others whose names escape
me. https://www.cbsretirees.org/FROGS_Newsletter_Spring_%202008.pdf
 
Legal Bill said:
My definition of celebrity differs from your's, Rick. But thanks for the thread. I've enjoyed it.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Bill. Some of these entries are more "celebs" than others. As you know from following the auctions, a famous owner adds value to the sales price. Just another aspect of what a crazy hobby car collecting is.
 
I enjoyed these entries...thanks for posting.
I feel a little bit like a celebrity when I'm driving my Healey.
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Robin WILLIAMS</span></span>

The externals of the Williams' lifestyle have changed surprisingly little since Mork. True, they moved from their rented beach apartment to a modest (by Hollywood standards) under $200,000 canyon home. Robin describes it as "rustic bordering on funk." Since his old Austin-Healey was stolen, he's bought a silver BMW. https://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20074926,00.html
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Tim ALLEN</span></span>

2mh97c6.jpg


In the Home Improvement episode, the car was bought by Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor's wife, Jill, as her own. Tim was not allowed to drive it, but sneaked it out for a spin anyway and was caught on camera. The car was featured in two or three other episodes of the show. Tim Allen did own a BJ8 Healey at one time, but I don't know if this is the actual car he owned or not.

Steve Byers (sbyers(at)ec(dot)rr(dot)com)
HBJ8L/36666
BJ8 Registry
Havelock, NC USA
https://www.imcdb.org/yourcomments.php?id=BJ8%20Healeys
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Deanna RUSSO</span></span> aspirational owner, actress in Knight Rider

55f8yt.jpg



Deanna: (about what her dream car is) When I was a toddler, my dad fixed up a 1960 Austin-Healey. It was a white convertible with red interior, and I'd give anything to own it. I can't believe he ever sold it.

https://www.tv.com/people/deanna-russo/trivia/
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Larry HAGMAN</span></span>

Larry and Maj's first child, Heidi Kristina Mary Hagman, was born on February 17, 1958. The new father was by then appearing on television regularly, and for a short while, in the summer of 1958, had a side job as a model for Leonard Starr's comic strip On Stage. The character, Jed Potter, was a good likeness of Larry, and even drove the same car, an Austin-Healy, that Larry did in real life!

https://home.comcast.net/~lmcintyre62/larryhagman/Biography.htm

For Hagman, appearing at West Point is a return to familiar territory and an embarrassing memory.

In 1956, when he was 24, he landed a role in an episode of the TV series "The West Point Story," which also featured Eden on another episode. Hagman didn't give himself enough time to drive to West Point from New York City in his Austin Healey convertible.

He was an hour and a half late, which meant that 300 cadets and actors had to wait for him. Plus, as he pulled up, the muffler on his Austin was belching like an elephant.

When he finally made it to the set, the director just stared at him in silence for what Hagman says was "two solid minutes." Then he asked the young actor his name.

After he mumbled "Larry Hagman," the director stared at him for another minute.

How did Hagman feel?

"I would have rather been behind that elephant," he says. —

https://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060324/ENTERTAIN/303249952
 
<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #FF0000">Doc KAMINSKY</span></span> Cinematographer, "The Misfits"

Cinematographer Doc Kaminsky, hired to make a behind-the-scenes documentary, remembers racing Gable and the Gullwing across the desert floor. "He had a Gullwing Mercedes and I had a brand-new Austin-Healey at the time," Kaminsky told the Reno News & Review. "Clark was an excellent driver, and we'd go blasting off over the Geiger Grade. And this was in the 1960s, remember, so no speed limits."

Gable and the Gullwing helped Kaminsky bust limits with the ladies, too. "One day, I was going with a girl downtown and I pulled up to a traffic light," Kaminsky told the paper. "Clark Gable pulls up next to me in his Gullwing and says, 'Hi, Doc. How's it going?' And the girl I was with, her teeth fell out. She says, 'Was that Clark Cable?' 'Oh, yeah. I'm working with him on a project.'"

https://paisleycurtain.blogspot.com/2011/03/clark-gables-car.html
 
Back
Top