[Healeys] Austin-Healey 4000

[Reinhart Rosner]

Hi Patrick,

 

Your understanding is probably right: John Chatham writes in an article (https://www.ewilkins.com/wilko/ah4000.htm): “Six modified chassis were thus put together by regular Austin-Healey chassis supplier John Thompson Motor Pressings and dispatched to Jensen which built the 3000 bodies.”

 

In Bill Emerson’s The Healey Book you can see the prototype with British license plate TNX65G in British Racing Green and without any badge on the bonnet. And there is a picture of a white 4000 with license plate PWD663F and what looks like the old Healey-badge.

 

>From the white 4000 with chassis 624W1628 (ex DMH, then Arthur Carter and Allen Casavant) I saw three efforts to sell the car. Twice in 2008: by the dealer Classic Restorations for GBP 250000 and at an auction where it was a No Sale at $350,000. In 2013 the German dealer Auto Salon Singen offered it again with POA.

 

Reinhart

 

 

Reinhart Rosner

55 100 BN 1

Vienna – Austria

 

Von: Healeys [mailto:healeys-bounces at autox.team.net] Im Auftrag von Patrick and Caroline Quinn
Gesendet: Dienstag, 23. Jänner 2024 08:30
An: healeys at autox.team.net
Betreff: [Healeys] Austin-Healey 4000

 

Greetings

 

Through the wonders of Google it’s easy to translate the Dutch to English.

 

My understanding is that in period a total of six widened new chassis were made for the Rolls-Royce powered cars. Three complete cars were made. Then sometime down the track, one of them was in a severe accident and one of the three leftover chassis was used in the rebuild. That car was finished in red and imported into Australia in late 1974 and I drove it in January 1975. That car has since been fully restored in Old English White and remains in Australia.

 

When in the UK later in 1975 I met Peter(?) Cox who was the owner of another Rolls-Royce powered car that was finished in British Racing Green. I had the pleasure of driving that at an Austin-Healey rally at Donington Park. That is the car in the Dutch Healey Museum.

 

The third example, also finished in white, ended up with Alan Casavant and as far as I know is in Switzerland.

 

Sometime in the 1980s or ‘90s a replica was made in the UK by ex-pat Australian Keith Boyer and featured in a UK magazine. I have a recollection that it was finished in red, but I may be mistaken.

 

What is interesting is the chassis number of the car coming up for auction in Belgium (not the Netherlands) is BN4460941 while the chassis number of the car in Australia is F 41.

 

With anything that is rare, it’s always important to pay due diligence to its history.

 

Hoo Roo

 

Patrick Quinn

Blue Mountains, Australia 

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