Austin-Healey 100/4 (BN1) (1954)

This car is in auction on The Market website. The auction is LIVE now and finishes on 28th January. Price is a lower estimate.

All bidding takes place on The Market (see photos for web address), plus you will find further text, over 90 photos/video fully illustrating the car and its service history, and the ability to ask questions directly to the seller. The text below is just a brief summary of our full description.

It’s incredibly rare to have such a detailed provenance of a vehicle, but ownership of this car was held within the same group of friends from 1972 until only last year. ‘I had it for 30 years alone,’ says former owner Nigel. ‘Prior to that it was in the care of my good friend Paul Bennett, and then another friend AJ Pope who I bought it from.’

Pope intended to restore the car but with his Triumph TR4 taking up all of his time, it would be Nigel who took up the reins. ‘He’d only started work on the steering and front suspension by that point, but I moved it to a large barn adjacent to my house and work started.’

The comprehensive bare-metal restoration process took quite some time as life got in the way, but it was eventually completed in the late Nineties. ‘By that time we had a holiday home in South West France and it lived there until 2019, we had perfect weather and roads for the car.’

There are a good number of invoices in the history file (see photo gallery below), both from the time of the restoration itself and of subsequent work that Nigel carried out. He was good enough to compile a summary list of all parts fitted. Restoration work apart, most recent big bills include: a new windscreen frame (£600); a fresh petrol tank (£274.95); carburettor refurbishment (£337.52); and fitment of a full stainless steel exhaust system (£263.94).

‘I always brought the car back to Britain on a trailer for any work or maintenance required,’ explained Nigel. Last year the car was sold to our vendor. 

The vendor says it still drives superbly and that he has had this car fully recommissioned, serviced and tuned: “The overdrive has been restored, it has had safety harnesses fitted and had a full brake overhaul (with new brake shoes, new drum cylinders where required and a new master cylinder).

The reason he is selling this car is to move to an even rarer Le Mans spec. BN /1.

There’s a tiny split in the paint by the nearside bonnet aperture, but that’s all we can find and the paint finish is still excellent – impressive if the restoration was 21 months old, let alone over 21 years. Panel fit is equally good, and there’s no sag present in either door. The Blue over Cream colour scheme looks even better in the flesh than it does in the pictures and suits the Healey’s sweeping outline perfectly.

Bright work is of a very high quality. Again, the only small imperfection we can find is a touch of surface rust on the nearside chrome headlight surround. That’s an easy fix, or, like us, you could be of the opinion that it adds a touch of patina to the car’s overall presentation. The bumpers, windscreen surround and chrome wire wheels are all very smart.

Overall, it’s a truly captivating example.

For much more description and photos see The Market website.

The vehicle can be viewed with us in Abingdon, South Oxfordshire.

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