148 Classic & Sports Car September 2019
T
he sight of an Austin-Healey
threading its way through
this famous chicane is noth-
ing unusual in itself, a scene
played out every year since
the first Revival Meeting
in 1998. But for marque
specialist Bill Rawles, sons Charlie and Jack, and
this car’s lucky owner, today represents the
culmination of a five-year project; of endless
days researching in libraries; and of more than
1700 man-hours spent hammering, beating and
fettling, bringing to life a piece of Goodwood
history that might well have been lost for ever
were it not for their joint endeavour.
The car’s owner, modest to a fault, would
rather remain anonymous, but his is a rap sheet
that would put most of us to shame. Countless
cars have passed through his hands over the
years, from a Riley Imp to one of two Singer
Le Mans to have competed at La Sarthe, yet
no marque has resonated in quite the same way
as Austin-Healey, a passion sparked when he
embarked on the restoration of a rare 100M.
Being such a fan, his quest led inevitably to the
pinnacle of the Healey totem – a 100S, which in
turn brought him to long-time specialist Bill
Rawles. “I was driving over to visit Bill, having
been recommended his workshop, when I rather
embarrassingly ran out of petrol,” he says.
“I rang up and told him the trouble – and that
I was in a 100S. He was there in five minutes!”
The 100S eventually made way for other cars
but, wanting something to tinker with thatwasn’t too complicated, he asked Rawles to keep
an eye out for a suitable early 100, which duly
turned up finished in white and red. “And it
didn’t look too bad – my words, not his,” he
laughs. “I took it home, thinking that I’d fiddle
with it and, over the years, restore it. I started to
take it apart and it became apparent that it was
a little bit more ugly than I anticipated; the body
came off and we gasped. Later brakes had been
added, with the servo hammered through the
bulkhead, which had to be replaced, and there
was rust everywhere. We had the chassis dipped,
and what came back was barely recognisable.”
A rebuild had always been on the cards, but
greater impetus was given to the project after the
owner followed up an interesting lead suggest-
ing that, at one point, the car had been a racer:
“I was reading Bill Piggott’s Austin-Healey 100
in Detail when I turned the page and there was
a picture of this car. I started doing some digging,
and soon ascertained that it had raced earlier.”
The investigation led to the purchase of 15 years’
worth of Goodwood race programmes. Sure
enough, while leafing through the archive,
a certain David Shale’s Healey turned up in the
entry lists: “I even found out that he’d finished
third in one of the races, thanks to the person
who’d first had the programme and filled in the
results in pencil.” With dates, photographs and
race entries studied and compared, it quickly
became clear that the Healey, DNH 828, was
a highly significant machine for just how early it
took to the track, being the first privately entered
example of the marque to race at Goodwood.From top: MacLeman
guides the Healey through
the Styrofoam chicane of
the restored circuit; engine
has been painted Healey
green, but was previously
finished in red; David Shale
races at Goodwood in ’54