Making Chassis for Nash Healeys

An interview with Geoffrey Shepherd on making chassis for Nash Healeys.

Geoffrey Shepherd was a mechanical assembler at the Cape Works

Transcript

Geoffrey Shepherd: …we was doing them things for Tickford, we were making the chassis. We suddenly started making chassis to go to Italy for the American side of – he went in with the Americans… We started making these cars to take to the railway station, to go to Italy, Pininfarina in Italy, and they was then sent by boat to America.  They had the bodies put on and they was lovely, I mean, I’ve seen a picture of one, that’s all I ever saw and we was driving them, we was making the car, I mean, you could drive them, the radiator, brakes, everything.

 Interviewer: But no bodies.

Geoffrey Shepherd: No body.  It had no seats either.  We had a thing we used to be able to hook on and sit on to drive them to the railway station.  We used to do that on a Friday… Just over the Cape Bridge.  There was all railway lines and the coal used to go to the gas works down through it and it was like twenty or thirty railway lines there.

Interviewer: So, you used to drive the cars, without seats, to the station?

Geoffrey Shepherd: Yes, we sat on, we had a box.  It was made, you could put it on the chassis, and sit on it, and start it up… All I know is that when we got it there, and they had the trailers there, and a ramp to run on, you know, they run up, we put them on and somebody there bolted them down, we took the battery off and the seat thing off and we had a van who come and pick us up and take us back.  You just done it.  It was a good afternoon skive, if you want to call it.