I will confess I did contemplate leaving this car exactly how it was restored in Australia and bringing it to the Austin Healey enclave just how it was restored by the prior owner. It was that nice.
After much soul-searching searching, however, I re-committed to making car number one exactly accurate. Tony in Australia (prior owner) built this car to be a driver he could show and drive anywhere. He did beautiful work and installed a number of wonderful features (such as disk brakes) to make the car more drivable than ever… but my vision for this car is that it would look exactly the way it looked when it was brand new, which would preclude any modifications.
Pretend it’s spring of 1958 and the Bugeye is not yet a thing and no one even realizes that they need modifications or improvements because the stock car was being touted as perfect in its original form. After wrestling with leaving well enough alone, we decided to completely rebuild 501 as though we were living in the spring of 1958, building the car to the original stock specifications. And so for accuracy this car will exactly match the factory specs in every way, The concours in September will be a measurement of how well we do.
Let the cutting begin!
Take a look at where we are starting in the video below!
