The Healey & Austin Healey Register
- The Austin Healey in Australia 2004
Back in January I wrote an article for Flat Chat that showed that I had gone soft in the head. It concerned the
establishment of a register of all Healeys and Austin-Healeys that had appeared in the various club Yearbooks
that had been published since 1977. It certainly wasn’t a project that I was asked to do but just something I
thought would be both interesting and useful.
Since then I have gone through the most recent Yearbook and have updated the figures and just for those of us
who like statistics below is a break-up individual Healey and Austin-Healey models state by state. If you’re
wondering what the ‘others’ could possibly be, it’s the MacHealey single seater racing car that started life as a
BN1 and the other is a Healey Sports Boat. As far as I know there is one other Sports Boat in Victoria but no
details are known. Printed out the register extends for 138 A4 pages.
A few months back I received an email from club member, Garrie Bain, who some might know used to work for
Peugeot. You may not know that the latter history of Peugeot in Australia is closely connected to Jaguar, Rover
and BMC. Prior to Peugeot in Australia being a stand alone company there were connections with Jaguar Rover
Australia that was previously known as Leyland Australia and before that the British Motor Corporation. I have
probably missed out on a step or two but for the sake of this it really doesn’t matter.
It turned out that Garrie had been with BMC, Leyland, Jaguar Rover Australia and Peugeot through all
the changes over the years and had managed to rescue a number of items that may have been lost forever.
Of particular interest to us is that Garrie rescued what I now call the Austin or BMC warranty cards
from the late 1950s through to the end of the 1960s. Putting one and one together it appears that for
every car sold, BMC in those pre-computer days kept a separate filing card that included detail about the
car plus what repairs were done to that car under warranty.
Of greater interest to us as Austin-Healey owners is that amongst the cards were details of 145 six-cylinder
Austin-Healeys and just one 100 BN1. Please don’t ask how the BN1 came into it and there is no other information
on the four-cylinder cars.
The detail on each card does vary but most include chassis and engine numbers plus the names of the
Australian distributor, dealer and in most cases the first owner. On some cards there is information on the colour,
key number, tyre and battery types and even what ship on which the car came out to Australia. On the reverse of each
card are details of what warranty repairs were undertaken or in many cases the reverse has been left blank.
Details of the repairs are interesting and include quite a few broken windscreens, exhaust repairs as well as many
engine and body repairs.
I first thought that each card would have been established after a warranty claim was received but as there
are quite a few cards without any repair details, it can be assumed that a card was filled out as soon as BMC
received the notice of sale from the dealer/distributor. This means that the cards probably indicate all the six-cylinder
Austin-Healeys imported new into Australia. I’m not prepared to say that it is a definitive list of all Australian delivered
cars but it’s better than anything else that’s in existence. While the cards were maintained in Sydney it includes cars
delivered all over Australia.
Perhaps a break down state by state and model by model from when the six-cylinder cars were delivered new
might be of interest plus the numbers of cars that are not accounted for:-
You can see from the above there are 145 six-cylinder cars that have BMC warranty cards and comparing
the known chassis numbers with the list of cars that have appeared in the Yearbooks over the years some 97
are accounted for. This means that 48 six-cylinder Austin-Healeys have vanished, perhaps destroyed or languishing
in garages across Australia. Looking at percentages that is around a total of almost 67% of Australian delivered
six-cylinder Austin-Healeys accounted for. Not a bad survival rate.
The total for the unknown or unaccounted cars form part of the overall numbers and are not in addition to the
total. To bore you a little further with some more trivia it is interesting to note that from the 45 unaccounted
BN4s a total of 22 were delivered new to New South Wales, 14 to Victoria, 5 to South Australia, 2 to Queensland,
1 to Western Australia and 1 to the Northern Territory. The unaccounted for BN6, BN7 MkI and BJ8 were all
delivered new to New South Wales.
I have listed below the chassis numbers of all the 145 six-cylinder cars plus the 1 BN1 and while I cannot
of course provide current owners with the BMC Warranty Card pertaining to their car I am quite happy to send a
photocopy or scan the card and email it. All you have to do is ask. Plus if you can, a replied paid envelope
would be appreciated. The chassis numbers have been taken direct from the cards and do include a few
with the letter L which signifies that the car started life as left hand drive. I don’t understand this but can
guess that it was either an error at the factory or the car was converted very early in its life.
Patrick Quinn
“Wongaburra”
116 Warks Hill Rd.,
Kurrajong Heights
NSW 2758
Australia
E-mail:
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