In 1972 at the Geneve Autofair the Jensen Healey was first showed to the public. The press was optimistic and the first impressions where: "It is all what a Healey and a British sports car should be. A simple concept, a simple construction, good performance and very good cornering capabilities."
The alliance of Jensen and Healey
Kjell Qvale, MG-dealer in San Francisco, was the big force behind the promotion of the British sportscar in the USA. Hij started to import British brand cars like Austin, Morris, Jaquar and Rolls-Royce. The company was called " British Motor Car Distributors and was soon one of the biggest import companies in the USA.
He also added Austin Healey to his BMC range of cars and soon it became the best selling brand of the organisation.
Qvale didn't saw anything in selling the 6-cilinder MGC and thought that BMC went a step back. The market wanted a successor for the Healey 3000. During conversations between Qvale, Donald Healey, Jensen Motors and Wiliam Brandt the idea came for a new constuction. Jensen Motors got a new board of managers. Kjell Qvale became president of Jensen Motor due to the take-over of the shares of Carl Duerr an William Brandt. Tony Good and Kevin Beatty stayed minority share holders. Donald and Geoffrey Healey and Richard Graves became minority share holders as well.
Alfred Vickers was appointed as managing director and took the place of Carl Duerr who resigned. Donald Healey became the new Chairman of Jensen and the ather shareholders took place in the board.
Plans where made to increase the production numbers of the existing models to meet the rising demand due to the distibution of Jensen in the USA by the Kjell Qvale organisation. More important was the creating of a new, cheap and high volume sportscar like the Austin Healey tradition made and solled by Jensen and under the name of Jensen-Healey. It was april 1970 and the future looks prommising
During the early meetings Qvale had already some criteria on paper what the new sportscar should be like to fill the hole left by the Austin Healey 3000. Performance should be equal or better than the 3000, the roadhandeling shoud be better, a nicer interieur, more confort and it should meet the USA emmision standards
The design.
In Warwick Geoffrey and Brain Healey where already busy building a prototype sportscar where they hoped for that it would go into production someday. Qvale was very interested but maked clear that the production numbers he had in mind where not posible to realize in the Warwick factory. For those kinds of production numbers the Jensen factory was far better. To build the proposed sportscar cheaply the use of parts from existing cars was commonsense but the use of BMC part was offcourse out of the question.
Hugo Poole did the styling of the new car. Before that he worked for Crysler and Smith Industries. Due to the USA emmision standards they went to Vauxhall for an engine. The 2.3 liter prototype engine was changed on a few points. The first model was not accepted by Qvale and Beatty so they asked Bill Towns, the designer responsible for the Aston Martin DBS to make some sketches. These were accepted by Donald Healey and Qvale. They used some advise from Jaquar designer Bill Haynes after the body style was finalyzed
Kevin Beatty took the lead of the disignteam and asked Healeys Chassisdesigner, Barrie Bilbie to be the chef designer.
The Engine
The results of the 2.3 litre Vauxhall engine were disappointed. There was at least a 130 pk necessarily. Around that time Colin Chapman came with a proposal to use the 4 cilinder 16 valve 2 litre Lotus engine that was in development at that time. He suggested to build a limmited series of special Lotus powered Jensen Healey while the normal range should have the Vauxhall engine. But this proposal didn't make it through the board.
The Jensen-Healey team contacted Ford for thier RS 2600 V6 engine but due to strikes in the German factories they could not deliver. Also BMW was contacted but the production goal in the long term was a problem becouse they could only deliver about 200 engines a week.
So the negotiations with Chapman where reopened again. The design of the 4 cilinder engine came from the Coventry Climax engine from 1966. To speed up the design Lotus mounted there own 16 Valve cilinder head that was equipped with fuelinjection and could deliver 240 Pk. Due to the effectiveness of the 4 Valve per cilinder Head they were confinced that they could make a clean engine. Different desings were tested to meet the USA emmision standards. The changes were mainly the valvetiming, the compresion ratio of 8.4:1 what made it possible to use octane 91unleaded fuel, the use of a pair of Zenith-Stromberg 175 CDE carburators and by the use of a by water preheated exhaust mainfolt. The maximum power was 140 pk at 6500 RPM and a torque of 130 lbs/ft at 4800 RPM. Eventually the engine was constucted mainly from alluminium, by Lotus themselves.
There are two overhead camshafts who are driven by a chain. The valves where placed at an 38 degree angle so they could make wedge shaped combustion chambers. The crankshaft has five main bearings. Due to the less strict emmision regulations in Europe they fitted different carburetors. They used twin Dellortos on a cold mainfold. That gave the engine 5 pk more power.
The gearbox and suspension
The rest of the car should be simple and cheap. The gearbox was the close-ratio one from the Sunbeam Rapier H120.
Both the front suspension and the steering gear came totaly from the Vauxhall Firenza. Also the backaxel is from the Vauxhall Firenza. It is a stiff one with coil springs and diagonal trailing crossbar. The geometry is changed a bit and also shorter springs where fitted to get the right hide. There are disc brakes at the front and drums at the back. This also came unchanged from the Firenza.
It was clear that the car would be compared with the Austin Healey 3000. The public expected that the car was going to be better. Twenty percent less weight with the same engine performance.
The public opinion
The press wrote positive and predicted a future classic. besides some startup problems the production was around 100 Jensen Healey and 25 till 30 Interceptors a week. At that time Jensen had 1000 employers. The building of one Jensen Healey took 10 days. One Interceptor took 7 weeks !.
Alfred Vickers ha a lot private problems and resigned. Kevin Beatty took his place as Managing Director. The Interceptor who was designed in Italy took the company through many difficult times. The market they where in had more possibilities then in former times. But the next Interceptor should be one they could build 40 of in one week. For the Healey they expected to build 150 cars a week. The feeling of trust in the future with on growing market for hand made cars was good.
The early launch of the car with an engine that was not yet totaly evolved costed Jensen a lot of money due to warranty claims. Colin Chapman refused to take the responsibility. The demand from the Jensen board to deliver 200 engines a week was almost imposible for Chapman and that resulted in the refusal of Chapman to give any guarantee.
The MkII arrived
On August 19th 1973 the first Jensen Healey Mk II came of the production line with chassis no. 13352. It had a complete new designed engine, differenly shaped front wings and the carrosserie was build with care.
The improved interieur with the wood-look dashboard was new aswell. They where made with the so called '5 mph' bumpers for the American market and normal bumpers
The Lotus engine had improved a lot. The lubrication of the crankshaft bearing, the bearings themselfs and the oil seals where redesigned to gain more reliability. The designers took the car to a higher standart by adding chrome and other trim. There was also a hardtop available.
In November 1974 the Jensen Healey got it's 5 speed gearbox. You can say MkIII but it was not called like that. This gearbox was a Getarg, delivered Germany as an extra on the BMW 2002 Turbo. It could stand the power of the Lotus engine better. The gear shift pattern was a bit unusual. The 2nd, 3th, 4th and 5th gear where placed in the H pattern while the 1st gear was placed left towards the driver and reverse was placed in upper-left position. The driving shaft had a new clutch. The rear brakes where self adjusting and the engines all had the Dellorto carburetors of the DLH40E type (The E stands for 'emmision control') fitted. They where a little bit hard to adjust though.
The biggest change in design where the black rubber so called 5 mph safety front bumpers
The roadtesters from Motormagazine wrote in their march 1975 issue that the gearswitch was a little bit hard but the concluded that "due to the loss of power due to the 40E carburetors is the Jensen Healey a nice and fast sportscar with an excellent road handeling and nice to drive".
I could not have said it better because after 20 years of owning a Jensen Healey it still is really nice to take out on a holiday.
