I come from a long line of British car owners:

My mother had a TR-3 when I was a kid. My older brother had an MG-TD when he was in high school. My first car (the f**king Renault Caravelle I learned to drive was not a "car"!) was a Triumph Spitfire. And my second car was a Triumph Spitfire Mk II.

When my parents got divorced, my dad's "mid-life crisis" car was another MG-TD.

When I was in college, I bought an MGA coupe that had been crashed into a house for $250. I got it working and drove it for 3 years, before buying my younger brother's Jaguar 320 Sedan. (Betcha never heard of that - it's a long story. A rare, but not collectible Jag.) Around the same time all this was going on, my older brother was driving an XKE and my best friend also drove an XKE.

The woman I was dating, god love her - she later became my wife! - went to a concour d'elegance avec moi and fell in love with a Big Healey. (Now we're getting to the point of this ramblin' tale.) We shopped around for a few months and found her a 1967 Austin Healey 3000 Mk III BJ8. This was the "biggest" of the "big" Healeys - roll-up windows, a flip-up top (much faster and easier than any damn power top I've ever seen) and one of the sweetest sounding motors I've ever heard.

The TDs were great fun - absolutely adorable, sweet little go-karts. (Could probably beat the 36 hp VWs back then, but never tried!) The Spitfires were great fun, too - perfect for a kid in high school. Cute, sexy, powerful enough to have some fun racing all my friends who owned Spridgets. The Jags were so smooth and fast and refined. And my MGA Coupe - ah, I loved that car. Talk about neutral handling! It was like the gas pedal was your oversteer/understeer control. Give me La Honda Road and an MGA!

But the Healy! OH MY GOD - what a scary beast that thing was!!! I sometimes got the feeling like I was sitting in the back of a sled, hanging onto this huge honkin' straight-6 engine, hangin' on for dear life! Talk about a car that could get your adrenaline pumping!

So anyway - the point of my story. The Healey was such a brute. Imagine my surprise just now when I found a web site with 0-60 and 1/4 mile times for the big Healeys - 9.2 and 17.2! I never in a million years would have guessed the MCs is that much faster than my wife's old Healey!

I guess it just all feels so much more "together" in a MINI that you don't realize how quick the little bugger is!

 

Thank you.

Clover

 

Cool story!

also shows how far automotive engineering has come over the years