DU: I have been some quite good distances in it. I always have my fingers slightly crossed.
Interviewer 2: What’s it like on hills?
DU: It’s a very powerful car on hills because you’ve got a lot of low down power so hills and things are absolutely no problem at all, you can storm up hills, past anything. So, it will keep up with modern traffic, I mean, obviously drivers, white van men, can probably overtake you on the motorway, but it is really good strong performance car, you feel you can drop down in top gear and still pull away and get up anything.
Interviewer 1: I imagine it’s the sort of car that attracts a lot of comments?
DU: Yes, it does. I’m quite elderly and even though I’ve had it thirty years I was still quite old then, but once driving out from a rally at Coombe Abbey, it was only a child of about six, but he did say, ‘oh look mum, there’s James Bond’. [Laughs] But I think he was more referring to the car.
Comments
Just after the Second World War my father, Victor Taylor, was assistant works manager at Benfords on Cape Road. At that time they were making concrete mixers and one day a young man visited the factory to enquire whether he could rent a small area of the factory for his enterprise. My father dealt with the request and was told the factory space was needed because the young man wanted to make sports cars. “What’s your name?” asked my father. “Donald Healey,” came the reply.
The rest is history, as they say.
Mike Taylor
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