• 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

The oldest racing Austin Healey outside the factory examples - Shelby connection?

Share this page

The German ID tag does not match the Dutch delivery of the Heritage certificate
 
BN1L/144648 is what it states on the BMIHT Certificate and and on the German Data plate as well as the 1994 letter to Clausager - am I missing something?
 
Delivered to Stokvis (Netherlands)
ID Tag is is German language, should be Dutch or English
 
ID tag also says 100-4. I'm confused - I always thought the factory name for the model was 100 and the term 100-4 was never used by the factory. Rather, it was started by the public/press after the 100-6 came out as a way to differentiate between the 4 and 6.
Also, any guesses why the tag appears to be glued on rather than small screws?
 
The German tag looks like a generic government (TÜV) assigned tag used as a replacement when the original is missing. Does one assume the original is indeed missing and why does it have an assigned tag and presumably at some time - a German registration? When was it in Germany? Does it have it’s oblong factory chassis plate riveted on the RH frame rail? I was hoping some long time Healay fans would remember when this was ‘barn found’ in Columbia SC in 1994 - anyone???
 
HealeyRick said:
I think I might want a little more documentation on this: "In 1953, this Austin Healey was shipped to the United States. Its destination? Wichita Falls, Texas. And who happened to be working there at the time? None other than Carroll Shelby. " Seems like Ol Shel had his paws on every Healey in Texas.
Click to expand...
I do not believe Carroll Shelby had his hand in every Healey in Texas. The 1988 Conclave in Afton, OK, Shelby came with a GT40 and a Cobra to the event and gave a talk and I do not remember him saying anything about building a V8 Healey. However, I guy recorded the whole thing so there might be something? Camcorders were just out with great recording qualities, etc. Maybe the guy can be found?
 
Reminds me a bit of the guys who buy Healeys, get their British Motor Industry Heritage trust certificate, and note that the car was initially shipped to Warwick. They then conclude that it was personally owned by Donald Healey and then they push that myth when it comes time to sell.

I guess they don't know enough about marque history to know that Donald operated a dealership, and cars were sometimes shipped to Warwick for delivery to US servicemen stationed in England and who had ordered a Healey while there.
 
I do remember reading a post online from a guy in south Texas who claimed to have built three Chevy-engined Healeys for Shelby around the time he was trying to get a deal done with Chevy and Healey to build a production car. The guy sounded pretty legit and knowledgeable.. I can't remember where I saw it and could never find the post again. Who knows, could be true.
 
HealeyRick said:
I do remember reading a post online from a guy in south Texas who claimed to have built three Chevy-engined Healeys for Shelby around the time he was trying to get a deal done with Chevy and Healey to build a production car. The guy sounded pretty legit and knowledgeable.. I can't remember where I saw it and could never find the post again. Who knows, could be true.
Click to expand...
Where do you think you saw that online?
 
Is this of any help for further search ?

BCF ChatGPT .png



If you prompt ChatGPT it will give a list of sources (links)
 
Which brings up the Ted Sutton Austin Healey V8 which so impressed Phil Remington and Carroll Shelby that Shelby hired him as a founding member of the Venice Crew to instll 427 Ford engines in the Cobra. I sat next to Phil at a charity dinner event for Shelby at the Petersen Museum and he basically confirmed the story. Ted Sutton’s nephew also wrote of this in a post on a Bring a Trailer auction in 2022. ‘The first Cobra’ should probably read ‘The first 427 Cobra’

“Our Uncle, Ted Sutton, was an Original Venice Crew Member, who created, and fabricated the first Cobra. Ted had installed a V8 in an Austin Healy, and Carroll Shelby heatd about Ted. Shelby said “find that guy with the Healy…” and that was the beginning of the Crew !
Ted now lives in the San Diego area, and attends Cobra events, as his health allows. In a recent phone call, Ted told me he spends his time listening to music, and reading about aircraft, like the one he built and flew all over the place ! Uncle Ted is a True Pioneer, in the Automotive world. Just an update…..”

Healey Rick posted about this on this forum here:

 
This is a great story about Ted Sutton's creation of the 427 Cobra:
Ted Sutton had just created a monster.

Sutton was a resourceful young mechanic at Shelby American, the company Carroll Shelby had assembled in Southern California to build the Cobra. Engineered by motorsports savants and equipped with a 289-cubic-inch Ford V-8, the Cobra was the most fearsome sports car in the world, circa 1964. But Shelby wasn’t content with what he had wrought; he wanted something even more menacing. Sutton was assigned to play mad scientist. Performing surgery in a broad, red-brick building nestled incongruously in a blue-collar enclave in Venice, he retrofitted a standard Cobra with a big-block 427. When the conversion was complete, he did what any self-respecting twenty-five-year-old gearhead would have done: He climbed into the cockpit, cranked the ignition, and careened through the neighborhood, breaking the tires loose at every opportunity and sending gloriously obnoxious blasts of big-block bedlam out the straight pipes. When he got back to the shop, he heard his name being called. Mr. Shelby wanted to see him.

Gulp.

Recovering from knee surgery, Shelby hobbled down the stairs from his office. Sutton waited glumly, sure he was about to be fired. Instead, Shelby asked him, “Was that you that drove that car?” Sutton warily acknowledged that it was. “Well, how did it go?”

“It was just fine, sir,” Sutton said.

“Let’s see. You wanna ride along?”

Sutton explained that he’d pulled out the passenger seat so he could run the down tube for the U-shaped roll bar through the cockpit.

“Well, you can sit on the floor, can’t you?”

As soon as Sutton wedged himself into place, Shelby started slinging the Cobra through a nearby field in four-wheel drifts and winding out the 427 to redline as he blew past stop signs. Sutton hadn’t adjusted the brakes or swapped out the narrow tires and wimpy wire wheels that had been mounted on the car while he was building it, and it was only by the grace of God that there were no schoolkids or other pedestrians happening past as they skirted around a trailer park. As he desperately hung on, with one hand wrapped around the roll bar and the other clutching Shelby’s crutch, Sutton kept thinking that he was trapped inside a flimsy deathtrap with a certifiable lunatic. “I was absolutely purple by the time we got back to the shop,” he said. “To say he scared the Doo Doo out of me would be a gross understatement—I was truly afraid for my life. I just knew we were going to hit something or someone.”

Shelby killed the ignition while Sutton lingered in the car, drained and ashen-faced. “That’s real nice,” Shelby drawled nonchalantly before limping back up to his office.
 
Back
Top