This week’s Prime Find is a genuine oddity, a subtle one-off re-design of a car well known to classic car enthusiasts, though perhaps less so among the general public; the Jensen-Healey.
The history of the model was covered in some detail by our International Editor in a previous Prime Find feature, so to save me typing it all out again, you can find that here.
A car that embodied the idea of the so-called “hairy-chested British sports car”, the Austin Healey 3000 – or “Big Healey” – had found its way into the hearts of many sportscar fans, but was showing it’s age by the time manufacture ended in 1967.
Meanwhile, Jensen Motors Limited in West Bromwich was known for it’s high-end Grand Tourers, from the 541 through the CV-8 and in the 1960’s, the technically advanced Jensen FF and it’s sibling, the fabulously named Interceptor. These were powerful cars, with huge 7.2-litre V8 engines, and stylish Italian-designed bodies.
However, they were also big drinkers, and at a time when the world was reeling under a fuel crisis, were seen as dinosaurs, and the company needed a new car, still a sporting GT, but more modest and less thirsty than the big Touring-designed coupés, hence the Jensen-Healey, which was shown to the world for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show in 1972.
Power came from a lightweight all-alloy 1973cc four-cylinder unit supplied by Lotus. Despite its relatively small size, this pushed out 144bhp, enabling a top speed just under 120mph and a 0-60 time of 7.8 seconds, pretty sprightly performance figures.
Unfortunately, as with all too many British cars of the period, early examples were plagued with quality and reliability issues, many linked to the Lotus engine, and although these problems were fixed, the car’s reputation took a hit from which it never really recovered. The rubber bumpers that were added in 1974 to help meet US safety regulations did little to help improve the car’s already nondescript looks, and the introduction of the shooting brake Jensen GT (Donald Healey was out of the picture by then) did nothing to stem the tide.
Final production numbers totalled 10,503 roadsters and 509 GT’s, and while almost three-quarters were sold in the US, a surprising number are on the road in the UK, bearing in mind only 2,020 were sold here – 259 roadsters at the last count, with another 175 SORN, and 34 GT’s plus 23 SORN. I have to say that I’ve always found the styling a little uninspiring, though I do like the GT more and consider it a pity that it wasn’t more successful, but its introduction came too late to prevent the company’s slide to liquidation and eventual closure in May 1976.
So we come to our Prime Find this week, which is neither a roadster nor a GT version of the Jensen-Healy, but a coupé – yes, you read that right.
Apparently built as a design exercise – the advert does not say by whom, nor does it say when this was done, though it may well be the vendor’s work, and therefore quite recent – to create a UK/European version of the Jensen Healey that didn’t need to meet the onerous US safety regulations, using a 1973 roadster as the base car. We’re not talking major redesign here – most of the work involved removing the heavy bumpers and replacing them with units from the Vauxhall Chevette HS and Viva. Besides this, the only significant additions were the wing side vents, which have a hint of Aston Martin about them, and the repurposing of the front bumper top trim as a chin spoiler.
These relatively minor tweaks have resulted in what I think is a much better-looking car than the original, further improved by replacing the ill-fitting soft-top with an aftermarket hard-top, complete with glass sunroof, upgraded to fit snugly and to effectively create a fixed-head coupé. Other than that, and some retrimming of the doors and boot, the car is remarkably standard, yet for me looks many times better than a regular roadster or indeed GT.
It’s certainly helped by the lovely metallic blue paintwork, which suits the car very well indeed, but it looks altogether sleeker and more modern, especially in profile. The smaller bumpers make a huge difference, and the hard-top looks like it was meant to be there. Had the car looked like this from the beginning, surely it would have been more successful in the UK and Europe at least, even if the US version had to keep those ugly bumpers.
Based on the photos that we’ve borrowed from the advert, the interior, in grey leather, appears to be in excellent condition, as does the bodywork. The car is for sale in Spalding, Lincolnshire, through a private vendor, and the asking price of £11,000 for a unique British sports car in seemingly excellent shape, only 35,000 recorded miles (believed genuine) and with a prestigious badge seems like a decent deal to me, especially when good examples of the standard roadster seem to be in the £15,000 to £18,000 bracket.
You can see the full advert here – as always, no matter how good it might look in photographs, we recommend an inspection before you buy if possible.
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us be inspired by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk