Wylie Hybrid: ’53 Nash-Healey
Today’s featured car has been in a collection in Wylie, Texas for quite some time. We don’t know Wylie and we are sure it is a nice place. Just seems odd for a nice Nash-Healey to turn up there. Nash-Healeys are really interesting cars partly because of how they came to be. Donald Healey and Nash-Kelvinator CEO George Mason met on the Queen Elisabeth, going from the United States to Great Britain. Healey was returning to England after his attempt to purchase engines from Cadillac, but GM declined his idea. Mason and Healey met over dinner and a production plan ensued during the remainder of the voyage.A prototype was built shortly after an agreement was reached, and the resulting Nash-Healey hit the track. Almost out of the box, the Nash-Healey finished fourth at Le Mans. The string of racing success didn’t help sales mostly because of the complicated production sequence that had the unfinished car traveling almost 8,000 miles between various assembly plants. The best finish the Nash-Healey had was in ’53 when the newly designed Coupe finished 3rd overall behind 2 Gullwings. Not too shabby. People say it came in 3rd not because it was fast but because it didn’t break. Well, isn’t that the point of a 24 hour race? Our Wylie car is in a pleasant color beige however we are not sure the interor is proper. Someone will have to jump in on that one. It has a reported 49,900 miles and it could be correct. The gauges and dash look good too. They say it is “lot tested” – a term infrequently used but easily understood. The asking price is probably a bit high particularly since it has minor body damage in the rear, We bet you can get a good price on this one. You’ll be welcome everywhere for sure. Click here for the eBay listing.