The end is near! We are so very close to loading AN5L 501 into a trailer and taking it to the Austin-Healey club national Enclave and concours event in Pennsylvania next week. We have spent the last 66 days completely disassembling the car, rectifying every non-concours detail we could find (and some we didn’t even know existed), and putting it back together. We did all of this in conjunction with our normal business operations, too! It has been two months of research, documentation, meetings, consultations, blood, sweat, and a little frustration to get to where we are today with 501, but we are elated with the final result, and we believe the concours judges will agree that this car is worth concours gold!
When we first set out on this journey (after the 8 month shipping saga to get it here from Australia), we were almost hesitant to tear into the car because it was so beautifully done. However, our goal for this car was to make it beautifully done AND accurate. During its initial restoration completed in Australia, every nut, bolt, and screw was touched to ensure the car was restored to factory specs. In our concours conversion efforts, every nut, bolt and screw was touched again to ensure that we made as accurate a car as we possibly could.
The past few weeks have been largely spent ironing out smaller, more obscure, and harder to verify details about 501. This past Saturday, we had the car mock judged by a couple of local Bugeye experts (thank you Fred and Peter!) who helped us come up with a list of things we had overlooked that we had to correct before the car could leave for the official judging. In the video below, we go over some of the items we determined needed to be addressed in the final week of preparation:
As a result of the efforts of every member of our Bugeyeguys team, we have produced what we believe to be a faithful re-creation of the condition 501 would have been on the showroom floor. There are a few more things we have to wrap up before the car is loaded for its ride to the Poconos (along with Gumby) on Monday morning, but 501, we believe, is ready to obtain concours gold!
