Today we talk about the man behind Healey Motors, Nash-Healey, Austin-Healey, Jensen-Healey, the man that turned down repeated offers by Ford and Saab to make a sports car, today we discuss the talented and driven Donald Healey.
Healey was born in 1989 in Cornwall England to a shopkeeper. His father was a keen motor enthusiast and owned a 1907 Panhard and would give Donald a 1923 Buick which had the first overhead valve engine that Buick made.
As a lad he took to al things mechanical and went on to study engineering before beginning an apprenticeship in aviation.
Before he could finish his apprenticeship and at just 16 years of age, WWI broke out. Healey volunteered immediately in the Royal Flying Corps, earning his pilots wings to go on night bombing raids and anti-zeppelin patrols eventually becoming a flying instructor. He actually received his pilots license two years before he qualified for his driver’s license.
Things were going good till he got shot out of the sky by British anti-aircraft fire plus a series of other crashes put him out of the pilot seat and into the mechanic’s bay checking aircraft components for the Air Ministry.
Post WWI, Healey jumped into automobile engineering and opened his first garage in 1920. Soon he found himself more interested in rally driving and racing than fixing other peoples cars. He began using the garage to prep for competitions and entered into the 1929 Monte Carlo Rally driving a Triumph 7. Which was the tiny response to the Austin Seven, both small cars and drafted by the same guy, Stanley Edge.
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