A true Austin Healey engine never really existed. Donald Healey was an auto engineer, but he concentrated on the body and components of the car not the engine. For this reason most of the engines only had the name Austin on them. Just like in the early days of Datsun. If you popped the hood there was a Nissan engine in it every time.
Every engine that was placed in the Austin Healers was borrowed from the Austin Motor Company who was a part of the British Motor Company. This included the very first prototype that made such a splash at the London Auto Show.
The original engines that were in the first Austin Healey’s were just stock Austin A 90 engines. Nothing was special about them. It has a capacity of 2660 cc in line 4 with a 3.4 bore and a 4.4 inch stroke. The difference was in the transmission. The first gear was to get the car moving, the second and the third were overdrive gears. The car went from 0 to 60 in 11.2 seconds with a top speed of 106 mph.
For a fair comparison the Austin A40 had the same engine but a different transmission. It had a top speed of 77.8 mph and accelerated from 0 to 60 in 25.6 seconds.
This video is what a restored Austin Healey Engine should look like.
See it at San Francisco Sports Cars.
Donald Healey did not build great engines; he was the master of taking parts and placing them together in the correct order for them to go faster than ever before.
So in reality there was never an Austin Healey engine, just cars with the influence of Donald Healey which brought out the true performance of all the combined parts to their fullest.
Read our post about the Austin Healey 100 4.
