[Healeys] Non Standard Colours

[sebring at illawarra.hotkey.net.au]

First question to be addressed is; when is the car factory painted?
A friend has a very dark blue that is not on the brochures or official list. 
Many people advised him to correct this greatly inaccurate feature of his 
otherwise very original BJ.7. John resisted all efforts to influence him to 
repaint to original as wherever he looked there was never a sign of any other 
colour having been applied. John requested a Heritage Certificate and was 
extremely satisfied with the answer. His car was definitely not a production 
line colour.The certificate stated " the car was despatched to the Donald 
Healey Motor Co in undercoat" and obviously painted to the customer's requested 
choice of colour. So was John's car factory or factory painted? I believe that 
almost anything was available as an order from your dealer as long as the 
request was readily available at the time,the purchaser had the time to wait 
and was prepared to wait.
Remember there was a set of homologation papers submitted for performance 
improvements which were required to be available to the public upon request of 
the part numbers. eg webers,4 wheel discs. alloy panels etc Basically that is 
how the LeMans kit came about.For Sprites one of the options was a Travel 
Rug.In Australia these were called 'struggle rugs' very popular options
Joe