New Austin Healeys on the way?

Nanjing Automobile (that's the company that bought Longbridge and what was left of MG Rover) announced today that was linking up with Healey Automotive Consultants, owner of the famous Healey brand, and its technical partner HFI in order to "collaborate with each other on the future development of the Healey and Austin Healey brands and sports cars bearing (the) name".

Now anyone with even a drop of petrol in their veins will have heard of the famous Austin Healey models from the sixties but I doubt that there's much real magic left in the badge these days for anyone under about fifty. It's also unclear what sorts of cars will emerge from the collaboration. But it's still immensely heartening to see a development that may just produce some UK car-making jobs and some new British cars, and which provides a bit more evidence that Nanjing appreciates the British car-making story it bought into when it acquired MG Rover and its stable of brands.

Blast from the past 3 - Austin Gipsy

An interesting one. Ended up very briefly at Goodwood last Saturday with Verdict tester Lee Dalton and the Corsa VXR, where we saw this. Although it looks a bit like an early Land Rover, this is in fact an Austin Gipsy.


The Gipsy was built from the late fifties to the late sixties. What did for it was the coming together of Austin and Rover under the same roof after the formation of British Leyland; the Land Rover was probably always going to come out on top when the post-merger model range was streamlined. The Gipsy was available in short and long wheelbase variants; at 90 inches and 110 inches these were very similar to the two Land Rover wheelbase options. A big difference between the Gipsy and the Land Rover was that the Gipsy had steel bodywork to the Land Rover's aluminium.