Video of the Week: Electrifying Austin Healey 3000 at Spa

I had no idea a race-prepped Austin Healey sounded this good! Spectacular and ballsy driving to match the brawny exhaust note.

Walter Cronkite extolls the virtues of Sports Cars and takes us to Lime Rock

This video is a gem.  First, we have Cronkite at the wheel of an Austin Healey, explaining the concept of a "Sports Car" the general American public in an era when chrome grill and bumper assemblies probably weighed more than an entire Lotus chassis.  Then he takes us to Lime Rock in the 1950s, complete with in-car camera-work behind the roll bar. Lotus 11's galore. And is that Walter himself at the wheel of the Healey at 1:56?? I see a moustahce in the tiny mirror!  The piece ends at the glamorous Monaco Grand Prix with Stirling Moss's victory in the Lotus 18.  Without ever mentioning the marque, this piece is almost an infomercial for Colin Chapman's fledgling brand, showing its stellar capabilities at both amateur and professional levels.

Also, isn't it just remarkable how little Lime Rock has changed in all these years??

This Healey packs a Yankee V8: Divine inspiration, or sacrilege?

At a car show last month, I came across one of the most interesting engine swaps in memory. The owner of this dark red Austin Healey 3000 decided to do a period-accurate V8 conversion on his car, by dropping in a 283 V8 engine from a 1962 Corvette! Now the Austin Healey 3000 had a strong engine to begin with, but this conversion gives 1.6 times the engine displacement of the stock engine, while lowering the weight significantly. Not only that, but the Healey engine was famously tall (it was originally developed as a powerplant for a mail truck!), and this conversion lowers the car's center of gravity enormously, while moving it back, closer to the center of the car. The handling improvement over a stock Healey must be startling!

The most appealing aspect of this conversion is to ponder the historical "what ifs" here. If someone had done this type of conversion back in the day, could the Chevrolet powered Healey have been a rival to the to the Ford powered AC also known as the 289 Cobra? With proper development and funding, a Chevy-Healey could have had quite a sucessful life in competition and sales back in the early 60s, but probably GM's marketing department didn't want to foster competition with their own Corvette offerings. So we'll never know if the sports car market had room for yet another Anglo-American marriage of beauty and brawn. Still, I would love to do a comparison test between this car and a 289 Cobra and see how they stack up alongside one another. For me, the car is prettier than a 289 Cobra, but is it also faster around a track? Click here for more pictures!