One more comment:
I belong to the Society of Automotive Historians (www.autohistory.org). Not
long ago an editorial column lamented the amount of "history" that has been
lost because cars with still-presentable original appearance have been
restored.
I used to own such a car (American, not British) and took it to Hershey a
few times after the establishment of AACA's HPOF [Historic Preservation of
Original Features] class. We'd park it at our flea market spaces, and a
number of other owners of the same model who were restoring their own cars
came and crawled all over/under it, with camera and tape measure and
notebook, because they were SURE that what they were looking at--after 60+
years--was still the way it was when it left the factory.
On a sadder note, I sold the car a few years ago to someone who said he
prized "original" cars (and in fact had driven one himself for years before
he sold it back to the family of the original owner). Alas, a year later I
saw it in the car corral at Hershey. I have no idea who bought it, but I
fear the worst....
Sarah Carr
BN1 in PA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charlie Baldwin" <mgcharlie at comcast.net>
To: <healeys at autox.team.net>
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 8:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Healeys] 750 mile car
>I suppose that I should comment on this, because the car that Shawn is
> referring to is mine. It is a 1960 3000. It actually has around 14,500
> miles on it now. It had around 13,800 on it when we bought it a couple
> of years ago.
> It is very original and we want to be sure that wherever it ends up the
> new owner does not want to restore it. The paint, seats, carpet, top,
> tonneau, trunk liner, etc. are all original as they left the factory and
> unrestored. The drive train is original. Some painting has occurred to
> the engine to make it presentable. Many of you may know that much of
> the paint on these cars was not necessarily done with longevity of the
> finish in mind.
> We also have the original tires on the original wheels. I'm debating
> now on whether I should have the wheels sandblasted and paint them to be
> presentable or leave them the way they are. The original paint on them
> does not look very good, with lots of small rust specks showing through,
> and one of them had already been sandblasted some when we got the car.
> I have signed up to have it judged in concours at Encounter in August
> and don't want to get deductions for using those ugly wheels or for
> having non-original type radial 165-15 tires on other wheels, either 48
> or 60 spoke, which is what I have available.
> The original exhaust system is also with the car along with a factory
> hardtop that was bought from the dealer when the car was new. The
> Heritage cert. does not mention a hardtop, so I have to assume that it
> was just bought from the dealer. The car now has a stainless steel
> exhaust system on it.
> The car is local here to Lancaster County, PA, and was bought as a
> birthday present for the man's wife, who traded another Austin-Healey in
> on it. It spent the first five years of its life in a climate
> controlled carriage house. But when he died, she turned off the heat
> and A/C and it mostly just sat. It was last registered in 1967, before
> being purchased at the estate sale in 2001. The party that we bought it
> from brought it back to life with mostly sympathetic means.
>
> I think that is a real shame that if the 750 mile car was in anything
> like the condition of this one, that someone restored it and destroyed
> all of it's originality.
>
> There is another car that this brings to mind. That is Larry Varley's
> 100 that was wrecked very early in its life and therefore did need to be
> restored. He did a wonderful job with it, modified it some, but it is
> truly a beautiful car, which he actually saved by restoring it. It had
> very few miles on it also.
>
> Charlie
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