A World Champion gets his first Healey ride. A dark sky, rain threatening; early Sunday morning 18 June, 2000, at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, site of the Formula One Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, Canada. “Follow the course marshal’s instructions and DON’T SCREW UP! We’ll be in front of tens of thousands of people and …
Nine short years is what Carroll Shelby spent as a race car driver. During his abbreviated driving career, one cut short by a heart condition that would partially confine his career, but never define him, Carroll Shelby raced heads up against some of the most prominent and preeminent drivers of the 1950s. Sterling Moss, Juan …
A Restoration Journey Goes the Extra Mile As a kid, there were few things I found more enjoyable than to dismantle appliances around the house when nobody was looking. I started with radios and my 10-speed bike, then the lawnmower and the snowmobile carburetor. For the most part I could put it all back together …
Riding along on the highway, I look over at the driver seated next to me as the airflow over the retracted windscreen deforms his cheeks into undulating waves of flesh.
August, 1965. I was 8 ½ years old. We lived in Minneapolis, and my aunt had recently returned home from a road trip to Mexico with her boyfriend. She had described some of the places they’d visited, and all I knew for sure was that Mexico was far away and foreign in a vague way …
About a year ago I took a picture of my grandson, Hunter, standing in front of my son’s restored 1977 MGB, as if he was a salesman. Well, this year Hunter, at three, has moved up a peg and is now representing a 1961 BT-7 Austin-Healey. If I ask him if he wants to go …
In the spring of 1964, my father, Al LaPolla, ordered a brand-new white Austin-Healey 3000 Mk. III at Guibardo Motors in Bellerose, N.Y. Not long after I got my driver’s license at 16, my father took me for a ride in the Austin-Healey, pulled over, and asked me if I wanted to drive. Of course …
The thought of hurling across the salt lakes of Utah at 200 mph is terrifying to most. There was a time when land speed record holders were kings and those speeds were not for people with weak bladders. Heroes like these were living out the dreams of little boys who plowed their toy cars through …
The Austin-Healey 3000 was designed by a racing legend, Donald M. Healey, and it embodies everything he wanted in an automobile: gutsy power that could win rallies, a sturdy chassis and mechanicals, and bold, curvaceous styling. For half a century this car has been the object of lust and envy. Top-quality cars have brought six …
