1953 Austin Healey 100/4
This spectacular Austin Healey 100/4 is one of the earliest known surviving Healey’s and was completed at Longbridge on 23rd September 1953, making it the 25th right hand drive ‘home market’ 100/4 constructed
The 100/4 was originally finished in Healey Grey, an early non-metallic version of what would later become Healey Blue, fitted with a blue hood and blue leather trim as well as ‘Austin of England’ boot badge and correct early two part dashboard finished in dark blue
The car was dispatched and sold via the Donald Healey Motor Company as per the first batch of fifty home market cars and the original buff log-book retained on file shows Donald Healey Motor Co as the first registered owner on 30th September 1953 with the registration ‘NWD 980’, which it retains to the present day
The car would soon be registered to its first private owner, Mr Derek Ernest Rickman of New Milton, Hants on the 8th October, generously gifted to him by Harold Wakefield, then owner of Castrol Oils and his sponsor at the time, Derek Rickman was of course a highly skilled and celebrated motocross racer of the period alongside his brother Don, and the pair would later go onto manufacture the highly revered Rickman-Metisse motorcycles
Within a letter retained on file from Derek Rickman, he fondly remembers the Healey as a gift from Wakefield ‘who had previously been part of the ERA racing team’. Both Derek and Don accepted a sponsorship deal by Castrol and Wakefield with Don receiving a new TR2 and Derek receiving the Healey which he states, ‘This was in October 1953 when I was just 20, not bad for a first car!’