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File under: how to properly drive your Stratos
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Films:
1955 Austin Healey 100S: Full Circle
I assume this car resides in South Australia (SA number plate) with the gumtrees in the background. I recently attended a private classic car show outside Brisbane and a similar 100S was on display. The sign said it was “one of 57 built by the Donald Healy Motor Company specifically for long distance racing.These cars competed in races such as le Mans 24 hours., Sebring 12 hours and the Mille Miglia the 1000 mile race around Italy. This car is one of the most original of the type remaining having covered less than 19,000 miles from new. 5 were sent to Australia and 2 to New Zealand. The owner has had this car since 1974.”
Why no sound of the engine? For me, the best part of the Morning Coffee series is the lack of sound, other than the car itself. The DB4 video was the best of those so far.
This, on the other hand, is a beautifully shot video, but it doesn’t feel like Morning Coffee. This is an emotional ride through time, and is exceptionally well done. It deserves to be shown on this site and anywhere else like minded people gather.
But I really look forward to the Morning Coffee videos, and of late they have been disappointing. Too much music. Too little of the sounds I love hearing in my own car. The roar of the wind. The thwack of pebbles thrown by tires. The snick of the shifter through the selector. Please return to form soon.
Lovely video. Perhaps the highest production values I’ve seen on this site. But, I hope there will be an article about the car. The old Healey roadsters were such beautiful and temperamental beasts, it would be a shame to leave us with just the few images of the actual car in the video and no supporting facts.
My God this takes me back. Back in the early 70s my dad and I had a small, informal business buying, reconditioning and selling British roadsters (and the occasional Peugeot 404!) which were relatively plentiful at the time. My first car was a ‘61 Sprite. My second was a ‘57 100/6 BN4 (with louvered hood). I would drive and drive and drive the back roads of north central Illinois day and night, and for all the frequent failings of the Lucas (The Prince of Darkness) electrics, stranding me in some Godforsaken spot at zero in the morning, I wouldn’t change a bit of it. Those Healeys (there was a 3000 in there,too) virtually defined my youth. The BN4 was my favorite, though, and if there is a heaven, I suspect it would, for me, be very close to what Petrolicious has captured here.
Why doesn’t Petrolicious credit the maker of the video, Dave Parkinson, who shot it for his dad, Tony, who owns AHS 3906, the 100S in the video? As far as I can tell, all Petrolicious has done is change the background music: https://vimeo.com/242011130 It’s such a beautiful video, it’s a shame the creator isn’t getting credit.
This could be a video of my childhood. It brought tears to my eyes. I did all those things. The models, the train, and especially the bicycle. My bicycle was my car as i was growing up. I rode it everywhere and dreamed of the day I could drive. My car was a yellow TR6 though not a Healey.
reaching into a box of nuts and bolts, figuring out fine thread, coarse thread…metric, sae, watching cars drive by. Having flashbacks, as a young boy, when my Dad was stationed in Paris, there was a teacher at Paris American High School that had a Healey 3000 and I would watch it pull out of the parking lot and drive away. It made a great sound and it fueled the inner car guy fire that still burns five decades later. Thanks, Petrolicious, looking forward to the next video.
