Reader’s restoration: 1954 Healey Sports Saloon

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After I restored my 1962 Austin-Healey, I needed a coupe for the cooler days. And so I went looking for something suitable. I found this very British Sports Saloon, a 1954 Healey Tickford Sports Saloon, offered for sale by a Turkish used-Porsche dealer in the north of Germany. I called him, and he said yes, he would trade in my Sylva Striker, which I also had for a while, which I wanted to get rid of. We met each other in the middle of Germany and swapped cars and money, then I went home with this old rotten wood and aluminium coupe…

There, I stripped the car down to the frame, rebuilt the frame around the rear axle as it was very rusty. I changed all the rotten wood (there was a lot of it, and it was rotten to the core) and welded all the cracks in the aluminium panels. A friend helped me to overhaul the entire engine and build a new wiring loom, and I customized the whole interior. Only the doors took three months of labour. All the aluminium panels where nailed with iron nails trough the aluminium into ash wood, hundreds of them, and they where all displaced by stainless steel screws. Then I wanted to have the 16inch wire wheels of the XK150 Jaguar, and therefore had to cut out the arches, which wasn’t easy but it worked in the end. I build the trunk completely out of aluminium and off course, I put in an aluminium tank.

The original panels had a few dents, so I got them all out and polished the whole glasspearl blasted aluminium body. This only took another two more months. Painting the car would have been easier, but I wanted to see the old aluminium from 1954. Within the last two and a half years I put about 2,000 manhours into it but... it was worth it. The car runs, shifts, and drives perfectly now, the engine is very strong and I have lots of fun with it!

(Words and pictures Bernhard Linck)

     

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