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mrunci

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I purchased a '61 BN-7 last weekend (no it wasn't in Scottsdale) and am now reviewing some of the documentation accompanying the car while I await delivery. Interestingly the "Destination" listed on the Heritage Certificate is "Charleston". The date of despatch was 8 September 1960. I have owned a few other Healeys over the years and have examined a fair number of Heritage certificates in the course of my seemingly "Endless Search" spanning a little over three decades. I don't think I've ever seen Charleston listed as destination before. Does anyone have a view of the bigger picture on US ports of entry for these cars during the early 60's? I assume that Charleston would have been a regional distribution center for BMC dealers in the southeast. Earlier documentation is sparse. While I bought the car in Michigan, the previous owner reports having purchased it in the Omaha area a little more than ten years ago from a guy who claimed to have owned it for about twenty years. That would have been roughly 1983. The story goes that prior to that the car was owned by a pilot stationed in that area who unfortunately never returned from Nam; the car is said to have been stored in his family's garage for some time before it was sold. No idea if that unfortunate pilot was the original owner or not.
Any information on US ports of entry or referrals to other sources of information on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks very much.
Matt Runci
 
My BT7 was dispatched to Jacksonville, FL in October 1959. Whether BMC shipped cars to both Charleston and Jacksonville would be a little odd given their relative proximity but it was BMC after all! I am sure others have more info on ports of entry.
 
stevebt7 said:
My BT7 was dispatched to Jacksonville, FL in October 1959. Whether BMC shipped cars to both Charleston and Jacksonville would be a little odd given their relative proximity but it was BMC after all! I am sure others have more info on ports of entry.
Click to expand...
Does anyone know where the "first" Austin Healey Dealership was located and the name of it?
 
This list is from 1971:

AUSTIN MG DISTRIBUTORS AND DEALERS IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA - 1971
DISTRIBUTORS IN THE UNITED STATES

1. B K DISTRIBUTORS, INC.
1326 Hennepin Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55403
Phone: (612) 336-2611

2. BRITISH MOTOR CAR DISTRIBUTORS, LTD.
19100 Susana Road
Compton, California 90221
(Los Angeles)
Phone: (213) 636-9831

3. BRITISH MOTOR CAR DISTRIBUTORS, LTD.
1200 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, California 94109
Phone: (415) 776-7700

4. CONTINENTAL CARS DISTRIBUTORS, INC.
11867 Westline Industrial Drive
St. Louis, Missouri 63141
Phone: (314) 432-6622

5. CRANDALL-HICKS COMPANY
Worcester Road, Route 9
Southbora, Massachusetts 01772
Phone: (617) 485-6300

6. FALVEY MOTOR SALES CO.
21425 Woodward Avenue
Ferndale (Detroit), Michigan 48220
Phone: (313) 564-5444

7. GREAT LAKES CAR DISTRIBUTORS, INQ
1301 Busse Road
Elk Grove Village, Illinois 60007
Phone: (312) 439-6000

8. LEYLAND MOTOR SALES, INC.
120 Commerce Road
Carlstadt, New Jersey 07072
Phone: (201) 933-5533

9. OVERSEAS MOTORS CORPORATION
2824 White Settlement Road
Fort Worth, Texas 76107
Phone: (817) 332-4181

10. ROYSTON DISTRIBUTORS, INC.
1601 Vine Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103
Phone: (215) 563-6033

11. SHELLY MOTORS, LTD.
544 Queen Street
Honolulu, Hawaii 96814
Phone: (808) 521-4771

12. SHIP AND SHORE MOTORS
701 South Flagier Drive, Box 3290
West Palm Beach, Florida 33402
Phone: (305) 833-9661

13. BRITISH CARS DISTRIBUTORS, INC.
Km. 8.9 Carretera Militar Numero 2
P.O. Box 125
Bayamon, Puerto Rico 00619
Phone: (809) 782-7300
The dealership in Charleston was:

CHARLESTON 29403
Southland Motors, Inc. (12)
584 King Street, Box 2176
(803) 577-4060

The complete list is here: https://mgaguru.com/mgtech/history/hs104.htm

I'm wondering if it was a private import to Charleston? Perhaps by a returning serviceman?
 
Charleston, SC was one of the primary Ports of Entry for the cars (Jacksonville, FL was another). My own BJ8 entered at Charleston in June 1966. As a part of the BJ8 Registry, I have collected copies of BMIHT certificates for 849 cars to date. If you're really interested, I can give you a breakdown of the various Ports of Entry for BJ8s from 1964 through 1967. I don't believe that Charleston was a "regional distribution center" but simply just where the cars arrived on the boat. My BJ8 was transported (300 miles) from Charleston to Raleigh, NC for sale to its first owner at Harmon-Rowland Motors. I have records of other cars that entered at Charleston but sold new at dealerships throughout the Southeast. East Coast distribution was handled by Ship and Shore Motors of Fort Lauderdale, by Hambro, Inc. in Ridgefield, NJ and by Royston Motors in Philadelphia. Distribution was primarily by paperwork transfer from the distributors to the dealers while the cars went from the Port of Entry directly to the dealers.
 
Last edited:
Steve,
Thanks very much for this information. It helps put the information I have on my BN-7 into context and clarifies the way the shipping and distribution network operated during that period.
Matt Runci
 
BJ8Healeys said:
Charleston, SC was one of the primary Ports of Entry for the cars (Jacksonville, FL was another). My own BJ8 entered at Charleston in June 1966. As a part of the BJ8 Registry, I have collected copies of BMIHT certificates for 849 cars to date. If you're really interested, I can give you a breakdown of the various Ports of Entry for BJ8s from 1964 through 1967. I don't believe that Charleston was a "regional distribution center" but simply just where the cars arrived on the boat. My BJ8 was transported (300 miles) from Charleston to Raleigh, NC for sale to its first owner at Harmon-Rowland Motors. I have records of other cars that entered at Charleston but sold new at dealerships throughout the Southeast. East Coast distribution was handled by Ship and Shore Motors of Fort Lauderdale, by Hambro, Inc. in Ridgefield, NJ and by Royston Motors in Philadelphia. Distribution was primarily by paperwork transfer from the distributors to the dealers while the cars went from the Port of Entry directly to the dealers.
Click to expand...
When I was in the Jacksonville, Florida Club(the mid to late '70's), we had a guy in the club who said his uncle used to own a Dealership in Georgia(I think St Mary's) and he used to go to the dock where the Healey's were unloaded and had to push some cars because the keys were sent directly to the owners. He also said that they had to hit the brand new shinny knock-offs with a hammer which gave them their first ding. He also said that his uncle's dealership was one of the first in the USA. He suffered a severe stroke a few years back and from what I understand he can has lost the ability to communicate.
I'm apologize that I can not confirm this and I'm giving it to you from a long ago memory.
 
I know of one guy locally who is the original owner of his BJ8 and he took delivery of it personally in Charleston after ordering it from BMC while in the Navy in Italy. I'll have to ask him how the keys were handled. I know that spare keys were attached to the firewall with one of the screws used to attach the VIN plate (some I have seen still have the impression of the key head in the VIN plate). Cars for Canada were shipped without batteries, so a key wouldn't help to move them during offloading at the port of entry.

Was it a part of the break-in process to put a ding in the knockoffs?

There were BMC dealers on the Georgia coast at Kingsland (Warren's Auto Service, Lee Street); Brunswick (Foreign Car Center, 2417 Norwich Street), and Savannah (Sports and Foreign Car Center, 230 Drayton Street). Those are from an early list, so there are probably later ones I don't have any record of (yet).
 
Hmmmm My certificate just says "personal delivery to U.S.A." wonder what that means.
My spare key was riveted with the vin tag as well.
 
Usually, Personal Export Delivery means that the original owner took delivery of the car in England for use there, with the intention to export it out of the country at some point. There were special tax exemptions for buying a car this way. Most of these PED cars were bought by U.S. military service personnel, but I have records for some few PED cars where the delivery was taken in the USA and not in England. It isn't exactly clear to me yet what all the rules and regulations were and whether a car special-ordered by an individual in the USA through a dealer or distributor for direct delivery to the USA would be considered "Personal Export Delivery". PED cars also were frequently issued a UK registration number, which makes sense if the car were to be driven in the UK before export. However, I have data for at least one car that was delivered direct to the USA that also was issued a UK registration number. I also have records for cars that were PED to countries other than the USA.
 
G'day, mention of Personal Export Delivery got my attention. My 100 was delivered as a PED. I am in the process of trying to find out if my car was registered in the UK before export to Australia. My 100 was despatched from Longbridge in July 1954 but wasn't registered in Melbourne until March 1955. It is a long voyage but would never have taken eight months. There are BN1s in Australia that were built later than mine but have earlier registration numbers, and this made me suspect that my car saw use in Britain in 1954.
Alwyn
 
With benefit from information provided by contributors here I tracked down the fellow who owned Southland Motors in Charleston during the '70's. Don Yarborough, currently VP and GM of Lexus of Charleston, confirmed that Southland was a BMC dealer founded in 1970 and thus did not sell new Austin Healey 3000's during the '60's. He did not recall another dealer in Charleston pre-dating his; thus it's reasonable to think that if my car wasn't a PED, it would have been shipped elsewhere. His best guess was Ship And Shore Motors in West Palm Beach where he believes most Big Healeys entering the Port of Charleston during the 60's were routed.
I wonder if the absence of a PED notation on a Heritage Certificate (e.g., mine states simply POE Charleston) should be understood as an absolute certainty of that fact, or if there were variations in practice, as Steve alludes to above. Yarborough confirmed from his memory that many cars that came through the port were sold to US servicemen through one device or another.
 
Matt, the evidence I have assembled over the years for many cars indicates to me that cars were not physically shipped down to Ship and Shore Motors from Charleston. Rather (for paperwork trail purposes), the car left the factory as the property of BMC, ownership was transferred on paper to Ship and Shore as the official BMC distributor, then transferred again on paper to the selling dealership -- wherever that may have been. The car itself was transported direct to the selling dealer. In the case of the local original owner of a BJ8, he took delivery personally in Charleston when the car came off the boat.
As the AHCA BJ8 Registrar, I am given access to the vehicle registration records of the North Carolina DMV for BJ8s that have a NC history. Many of the files I have obtained trace the car back to the original owner and include the paperwork referred to above. As I said before, my BJ8 entered at Charleston, but was sold new in Raleigh, NC. The file for my car shows the trail described above. The dates between shipping from the factory and sale to the first owner do not allow for routing the car physically down to Fort Lauderdale. It really doesn't make economic sense to do that, either, if it was known that the car would be sent to Harmon Rowland Motors in Raleigh for sale. I have similar files for many other cars that sold new in NC and they have the same paperwork trail.
 
mrunci said:
I wonder if the absence of a PED notation on a Heritage Certificate (e.g., mine states simply POE Charleston) should be understood as an absolute certainty of that fact, or if there were variations in practice, as Steve alludes to above. Yarborough confirmed from his memory that many cars that came through the port were sold to US servicemen through one device or another.
Click to expand...

The many certificates I have seen for BJ8s have, for example, "Destination: Charleston", or "Destination: Personal Export Delivery to USA" (and sometimes "Personal Export Delivery to [name of original owner], USA"). I have never seen one that says "Destination: Port of Entry, Charleston". Is that exactly how your certificate reads? If your cert simply says "Destination: Charleston" then I would conclude that the car was just part of a general shipment of cars to Charleston and was not Personal Export Delivery. Of course, I'm here to tell you that BMIHT makes mistakes on the certs far too often considering what the cert represents to owners and what BMIHT is charging for them now. They will replace a cert for no charge if mistakes are shown to them, but if you have nothing to compare with how would you know? I have several examples of certs issued to the same car at different times having different details on them. Whenever I spot such a discrepancy, I let the owner know so a correction can be obtained if they want it.
 
Steve:
Thanks again very much.
Your explanation fills many gaps - most importantly the ones I was try to reason through without adequate background knowledge.
By the way my cert states "Destination (dealer): Charleston, USA". Pretty straightforward.
Once the transport has arrived here with the car and additional accompanying documentation from the seller I will likely order a cert in my name from BMIHT as I've done with my previous cars.
By the way is there a Registry for early 3000's?
Matt
 
Hi all, I am new to the forum and recently purchased my first Healey, a BN7 Mk1. The heritage certificate for it too says Personal Export Delivery. The information I have would support the theory that the car may have been delivered to the first owner in the UK before export to Australia.
Can anyone tell me if there is a record of ports and ships used?
If purchased this way, was there a limit on time to export?
Dispatch date on the certificate States August 1959.
Any information would be greatly appreciated
 
Tatong said:
Hi all, I am new to the forum and recently purchased my first Healey, a BN7 Mk1. The heritage certificate for it too says Personal Export Delivery. The information I have would support the theory that the car may have been delivered to the first owner in the UK before export to Australia.
Can anyone tell me if there is a record of ports and ships used?
If purchased this way, was there a limit on time to export?
Dispatch date on the certificate States August 1959.
Any information would be greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

Hi, Tatong, welcome to the Forum, and congratulations on becoming a Healey owner! You have excellent taste in automotive machinery! I'm sure at one time there must have been a record of ports and ships used, but if that is still around I would have no idea where it is or who might have it. I certainly would be interested in such a list, though. It does raise the question of what happened to such factory records beyond the build cards. Probably disposed of after a time, but who knows?
Some BJ8s have survived to the present owner with records of their shipping details, but they appear to be very rare. Heritage certificates usually state something like this: "Personal Export Delivery for the USA", or "Personal Export Delivery to North America", or "Personal Export Delivery for New York". Some even name the original owner: "Personal Export Delivery to Sgt. R. E. Ward", "Personal Export Delivery to R. F. Bastion, USA". I haven't seen any recent certificates that actually name the first owner, perhaps because the UK privacy laws are taken seriously and names are left off now even if they appear in the build records. One Personal Export Delivery BJ8 that lives near me and is still with the original owner was ordered from Naples, Italy while the purchaser was in the Navy and he personally took delivery in Charleston, SC so the car never was actually used in the UK. The BMIHT data still says Personal Export Delivery. Apparently, yours doesn't specify a person or destination beyond that. Are you sure your car went from the UK directly to Australia? Most Healeys came to the USA, but in recent years most of them sold on the internet next turn up in Europe or Australia.

Because there were tax breaks provided to the purchaser for the Personal Export Delivery scheme, I'm sure there was some kind of time limit within which the car had to leave the UK, but if so I do not know what that was.

I only have data for BJ8s, but if you are interested in which Ports of Entry were used, perhaps the attached file will make it a bit clearer.

This data comes from the 906 Heritage certificates that I have for BJ8s in the registry files (plus BMIHT data recorded without an actual certificate), but it only includes those that give the specific Port of Entry into the USA (or Australia). Some merely state "USA". Of course, the more certificates I can collect, the better such statistics can be. Any BJ8 owner who has a certificate is invited to provide a copy of it to the BJ8 Registry if you want to contribute to our corporate knowledge and insights into how these cars were built and distributed.
 

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Hi Steve,
thank you for your response. I was lucky enough to obtain a copy of the original factory warranty card for my car. The car was built for a member of a rather well to do family in Melbourne Australia. The purchaser (as I understand) was working in the UK around the time to help establish the families business over there. Apparently he bought the car I currently own along with a 100m.
So I have the first owners name and actually the address it was first shipped to. Perhaps the best idea would be to check for any UK reg and as with Alwyns case see when the car was first registered here.
One interesting point was that the warranty card has one item replaced in March 1960 in South Melbourn. given the the car was dispatched 29 August 1959, I doubt if it was in the UK, it was for very long.
As far as shipping records, I am surprised BMHT do not have access to this. Surely some records must have been maintained.
That said, it seems it was a stroke of luck the an employee of Leyland rescued the warranty cards of the original Aussie delivered Healeys. Otherwise these too would have been lost forever.
 
On the certificates I have for BJ8s, if a Personal Export Delivery car was issued with a UK registration number it is typically so noted on the cert with that number.
It's possible that BMIHT has custody of the BMC records. I have had the pleasure of spending a whole day there in 2003 researching BJ8s, but I was only looking at the build information. It would be worth a trip back if they have other stuff related to manufacturing, such as the shipping records.
 
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