Austin Healey Post War Evolution

In 1945, fate brought Healey and his two partners to the picturesque midland town of Warwick. They were planning to produce a car in the style of Healey’s old four and a half liter Invictor. It would be capable of more than a hundred miles an hour, but smaller and with better handling.

Somehow or another, Wally Allen said that there’s a spare corner of our factory, you can start using that, and he started literally, uh, uh, derelict room at the Benford factory. From then on, he moved to another part of the factory which the Benfords had, and there, they set up the first production line.

The location of the factory was known as the cape, which seems odd, because Warwick is an inland town. But in these idyllic picture postcard English surroundings, there was indeed a cape that gave the factory its name. It also became an important meeting place for evening and weekend brainstorms and exchanges of ideas. The cape in question was not a geographical feature, it was an English pub, the Cape of Good Hope.

The cape factory site itself was rather less attractive, but it provided a setting for Donald Healey’s dream.

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Ref: AU Austin Healey