{"id":2679,"date":"2006-03-15T03:15:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T08:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2006\/03\/when-george-met-donald\/"},"modified":"2010-12-30T12:02:04","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T17:02:04","slug":"when-george-met-donald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/2006\/03\/when-george-met-donald\/","title":{"rendered":"When George Met Donald"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nash<\/a><\/p>\n

It all started aboard the Queen Elizabeth<\/a> (if the current ocean liner is “QE2<\/a>,” can we call its predecessor “QE1”?). Donald Healey<\/a>, the British designer who had been building limited-production Riley-engined Healey Silverstone<\/a> sports cars, Westland roadsters<\/a>, Abbott dropheads<\/a> and Elliot saloons<\/a>, was on his way to America in search of Cadillac engines to pep up his cars. Aboard ship he met George Mason<\/a>, head of Nash Motors, and the two men hit it off. “If you can’t get engines from Cadillac,” George told Donald, “come see me.” He couldn’t, so he did.<\/p>\n

Thus was born the Nash-Healey, an American drive train in an English chassis and, at first, English body. Mason insisted on a Nash-themed grille, so the prototype<\/a> borrowed a snout from Bill Flajole’s NXI<\/a>, a concept car that grew up to become the Metropolitan<\/a>. The production Nash-Healey<\/a>, which used the grille of the 1951 Ambassador<\/a>, debuted at Paris and London in the Autumn of 1950. Healey campaigned several of the cars at LeMans<\/a> with considerable success in 1950-53. The Healey-modified engine, a Nash Ambassador ohv six<\/a> with aluminum head and twin SU carburetors, became an optional engine for US Ambassadors in 1953.<\/p>\n

Mason didn’t like the British-bodied car, which was built in aluminum by Panelcraft<\/a>. He had Pininfarina<\/a>, then doing some contract work for Nash, build up a more voluptuous body in steel, and this became the 1952 Nash-Healey<\/a>. Its signature grille, which surrounded the headlights, was adapted for Nashes in 1955 and ’56<\/a>. A Nash-Healey coupe<\/a>, appropriately called “LeMans,” was introduced at the 1953 Chicago Auto Show and replaced the roadster in production. In mid-1954, the coupe was given a new roof profile with “dog leg” C-pillar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 1954 merger of Nash with Hudson and Mason’s subsequent untimely death, not to mention the $1,000 dollar loss the company took on each car, resulted in cancellation of the program after 506 cars were built. Healey, however, became a household word on the success of the Healey Hundred, which enjoyed a long career as the Austin-Healey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps only 30 Nash-Healeys were the late style coupe, one of whose remains<\/a> grace the top of this page. The car was snapped a couple of years ago at Ed Moore’s magical Bellingham Auto Sales<\/a> in Massachusetts. It was in pieces<\/a> when it left there<\/a> last month, but Ed<\/a> still has some Nash-Healey parts and information, and lots of other cars<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all started aboard the Queen Elizabeth (if the current ocean liner is “QE2,” can we call its predecessor “QE1”?). Donald Healey, the British designer who had been building limited-production Riley-engined Healey Silverstone sports cars, Westland roadsters, Abbott dropheads and Elliot saloons, was on his way to America in search of Cadillac engines to pep….<\/span>
Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3395,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2679\/revisions\/3395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kitfoster.com\/carport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}