# 23 Healey Blue and White

Ken Breslauer's book - `Sebring` lists the cars as: #23 Austin Healey 100/6 2680cc  Phil Stiles/John Bentley  #24 Austin Healey 100/6 2680cc  Roy Jackson-Moore/E Forbes-Robinson #25 Austin Healey Special 2680cc  Gill Geitner/Ray Cuomo

The above photo is from Bill Piggott's book, 'Austin Healey 100 In Detail'.  It shows a stamping on an aluminium rail from SPL 226B, furthermore Bill says there is no apparant known reason for this designation. SPL 226B is also known as NOJ 393, the 1955 Le Mans car driven by Lance Macklin. I had wondered whether it could have been rebodied on its return from Le Mans. It was finally released by the French in early 1957. However NOJ 393 has now been totally retored and made its appearance in the UK in May 2013. I spoke to Steve Pike, the restorer, and he confirmed that no traces of Pacific or Florida Green were found on the car, and there were no signs of it ever having been fitted with a different body.

Far from being the poor relation of the Healey family, the 100-Six has the most varied and interesting history of any single model type. The Streamliners confirm this. They must be the most exotic of all Austin Healeys, and the rarest.....as it appears that none now exist

Although the 200mph Record car was streamlined I am using the desription `Streamliners` to describe the 1956 Endurance car and the three other similarly bodied cars that ran at Sebring in 1957. The fanatstic,period colour photo above shows one of the cars before the race.

The Streamliners ______________________________________________________

The cars were a painted in a variety of colours

from many sources including The Story of the Big Healeys Geoff Healey The Healey Book Bill Emerson Sebring Ken Breslauer Healey, The Hansome Brute Austin Healey 100 & 3000 Graham Robson The Works Big Healeys Peter Browning Works Wonders Marcus Chambers www. racingsportscars.com

The three 100-Six Streamliners on the grid at the 1957Sebring12  hour race source www. racingsportscars. com

Ray Cuomo Car # 25 landing after striking a kerb due to being forced off line. The car made it back to the pits where temporary repairs were carried out. Cuomo finished the race in 26th place

According to Breslauer's book Car # 25 was listed as a Special, which could mean that it was listed as a Special Test Car thereby substantiating the above hypothesis. Another suggestion is that it is the car that was fitted with a Ferrari 2 1/2 litre Grand Prix engine. The DHMC purchased a Ferrari GP car and fitted the engine and transaxle gearbox to a 100S chassis. Geoff Healey refers to this car in his book "The Specials", and it is referred to as X224 He also mentions however that one of the long nosed 100-Six Sebring cars "was cut about and the Ferrari de Dion rear axle cum gearbox was fitted." which seems to imply it was fitted after Sebring which is consistant with Joe Jarrick`s opinion.

According to Joe the inaugural outing for the Ferrari engined car was the 1957 Nassau Speed Week, which would mean it did not run with this engine at Sebring in 1957. The car was driven by Peter Collins, a works Ferrari Grand Prix driver at the time. The donor car was purchased from the Marquis de Portago who was tragically killed the same year, at the 1957 Mille Miglia. The car had a 2.5 litre 4 cylinder engine which was tuned to run on methanol. This had to be modified to run on petrol for the Nassau event and as a result there was a drop in horsepower from 240 to 210bhp.  The car was a bit of a disappoitment, finishing 10th overall and suffering from very high oil consumption. During early 1958 the Ferrari engine, transaxle and rear end were removed from the car and X224 was rebuilt using a six cylinder Austin engine and transmission. The car had about 175 mph but was better sorted than with the Ferrari engine. Salvadori finished second in one of the main races but retired in the second due to clutch problems.

Research on the Streamliners contributed by Patton Dickson Peter Dzwig Philippe Dubois Ken Freese Derek Job Patrick Quinn Keith Turk Rick Wilkins

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Only one of the cars finished the race, the other two retired with cracked connecting rods. This was established when the engines were stripped by Eddie Maher back at the factory in the UK. The result of these findings was redesigned connecting rods for production cars, which never gave any further trouble even  in the uprated engines developed for racing and rallying.

However www.racingsportcars.com lists the cars as 100Ss and  states that car# 23 is AHS 3804.  If true that would be a very interesting part of Healey history. According to Joe Jarrick that car was built up from two reserve chassis from the special test car programme and subsequently  belonged to Fred Hunter. If  correct that would also mean that two of the four streamliners were based around 100 special test cars. The cars in the photos are all right hand drive and have disc brakes, plus they have 100 style dashboards and doors with no door handles. Bearing in mind we know for certain that the endurance car was based on a 100 it seems reasonable to asume that the other three cars were too. In which case, what better cars to use than the special test cars for the very special streamlined bodied cars.

# 25 Pacific Green / Florida Green Note the damage to the car caused by the above accident

Breslauer's information is partially incorrect as Marcus Chambers states the cars were 2639cc which is logical as that was the standard capacity. He also mentions the cars had  nitrided crankshafts and were good for 150 bhp at 5000 rpm.

100-Six

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The photo on the left shows the X224 Streamliner at the Nassau  Speedweek in  1958. The car was driven by Roy Salvadori who is pictured standing behind the car with his hand in his pocket. Roger Menadue is attending to the front wheel.

# 24 White / Lobelia Blue This is currently my best guess. Existing colour photos  are very poor and Im basing my guess on the shades shown in the black and white photo on the grid and the photo on the left which shows the car as having dark blueish side panels

1956 Endurance Record car - 6-port head - triple Webers - 10.2:1 comp - 156 bhp

The above picture shows Stirling Moss driving the 1956 Endurance car at Nassau Speed Week in 1956 (nice to know Stirling Moss drove a 100-Six!). It appears that he was just testing the car  as in the programme it is listed as Number 11 `Practice`. He won the Nassau Trophy, but was driving a Maserati 300S. The above car was driven by Carroll Shelby, Roy Jackson-Moore and Donald Healey at Bonneville in 1956 when the car  set many International Class D endurance records. (The car was  Healey Blue and White in colour) The record setting was used to promote the new 100-Six introduced later in that same year. This streamlined car was the same car (SPL 227B) as that used in the record setting in 1953 and 1954 and is based on a 100 chassis. However the 1956 version had a six cylinder C series engine of the type later introduced in the production 100-Six although with appropriate modifications, which included triple Weber 40 DCOE's and a 10.2:1 compression ratio. The other obvious difference was the specially designed streamlined aluminium body made up by Jensen under the guidance of Dr.John Wevering. Geoff Healey mentioned that Jensen  fabricated three additional aluminium alloy bodies for racing purposes and it would appear that these were installed on the cars shown below on the grid at the 1957 Sebring 12 hours. These are the real 100-Six Streamliners. Sebring 1957

It is surprising  there is so little definitive information, and very few photographs of the cars considering they were relatively `exotic` and very rare. More research is needed and in the meantime we are left to speculate about their exact specifications.