Jack W Drews wrote:
>
> Secondly, Donald Healey winning in a Triumph -- I need some further education
> in the Healey / Triumph connection -- like, was it his oil-coated shoes that
> inspired him to go off and build his own cars, or something like that?
I can offer some enlightenment here...
Donald Mitchell Healey (DMH) was apparently quite a fellow -- flew
airplanes in the war *before* the one with Mosquitos and Messerschmidts
and NUMBER 51 mowing down hedgerows. After the Armistice, he decided
that racing cars was about the only way to keep the level of blood in
his adrenalin stream low enough. If memory serves, DMH became the head
of Triumph's rally team during either the late Twenties or Thirties, and
won most of the major European rally championships (Coupe des Alpes,
Tulip Rally, Monte Carlo, and probably more) during his tenure there,
both as mechanic/engineer and as driver.
DMH was responsible for much of the design and engineering work that
went into the original Dolomite, which was to my eye the prettiest of
the prewar Triumphs, and which was quite a performer (as well as very
sturdy -- driving back from, I believe it was a Mille Miglia, DMH and
his navigator were stuck on a level crossing in an impenetrable fog in
Denmark, when the Dolomite was hit by a train; both men were injured,
but not critically).
I've had a question about the Dolomite's engine for some time. It used
a supercharged inline engine with dual overhead cams, in which the cam
drive was located in the *center* of the camshafts, and also had
beautiful finned castings on the inlet manifold -- in fact, it's almost
exactly like the contemporary Alfa Romeo 8C engines which, in varying
displacements (topping out with the 8C2900 that dominated Le Mans in the
early Thirties the way the Bentleys did in the mid-20s and Jags in the
mid-50s), were pretty much *the* roadgoing supercar engines in the last
years before WWII. I've always wondered whether the Dolomite engine was
licensed, or simply cribbed, from the Alfa design; Geoff Healey's book
"More Healeys: Frogeyes, Sprites and Midgets" doesn't elaborate on the
lineage in much detail (though it has some great period photographs of
his dad in the Triumph Glorias blazing across the Alps). Anyone who
knows more about the relationship between the two engines is invited to
write.
As for why DMH went off to build his own cars after the war, that was
the natural next step for anyone of his adventurous nature -- to keep
with the Alfa connection, consider that the head of Alfa's prewar racing
team decided to start *his* own company after World War II as well, in
an Italy that had been at least as heavily bombed by the Allies as
England had been by the Axis. DMH was perhaps not as Machiavellian as
Enzo Ferrari -- I sometimes think that Niccolo Macchiavalli was not as
Machiavellian as Enzo Ferrari -- so he never developed the resources for
building his own engines, and relied on existing sources. The first
postwar Healeys used the interesting Riley twin-cam pushrod four, and
yes, I *did* say twin-cam pushrod four -- dual cams high in the block
operated pushrods for a crossflow head with good breathing and excellent
power development for its size and era. Putting this engine into the
Healey Silverstone -- which probably had *the* most complex front
suspension ever developed for a production vehicle -- made for a
modestly successful sports car in its day, but it was the seminal form
of several even more interesting vehicles, one of which I had the good
fortune to see at the Palo Alto All-British Meet several years ago.
About 1950, DMH crossed the Atlantic to try to strike a deal with
Cadillac Motors, as he was very impressed with the performance of Sydney
Allard's cars with the Cadillac OHV V8. He had built a Cadillac-powered
Silverstone, which is the car I saw at Palo Alto; unfortunately,
Cadillac wasn't interested in racing cars at the time, so the deal went
nowhere. But DMH had met George Romney of Nash Motors on the crossing
and the two became friends, so when the Detroit connection failed,
Healey went to Kenosha, Wisconsin and struck a deal with Nash for a
number of their 3.8L inline sixes, to be installed in what amounted to
Silverstone chassis with envelope bodywork. The Nashes were not
terribly powerful, even when the usual modifications had been carried
out at Healey's workshop at The Cape in Warwick, but the partnership at
least let the Healeys compete in Le Mans and the Mille Miglia, as well
as sell some very sleek Nash-Healey sports cars to various Hollywood
celebrities (and to tie in with the Sabrina name, if in an entirely
different context, William Holden drives one in the original movie
"Sabrina," also starring Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn.)
The 1953 deal with Len Lord of BMC, resulting in the Austin A90's engine
and transmission being adapted for use in the Healey Hundred, is well
known, and probably needs no retelling here. The only other connection
that probably is appropriate, if only to finish out the failed-V8 deal
thread, is that DMH and his good friend Carroll Shelby -- about the time
Shelby and Roy Salvadori were famous in England as the drivers of the
Aston Martin that won Le Mans -- put a Ford V8 into a Big Healey chassis
and tried to rouse some interest in the device. BMC quashed that (as
they also quashed the Coventry-Climax powered Super Sprite), insisting
that BMC cars would have BMC engines, no exceptions. AC Cars had no
such restrictions, proving that it takes more than the right idea to
succeed -- it takes the right listeners and the right timing as well.
--Scott Fisher
|