Geoffrey Carroll Healey (14 December 1922 – 29 April 1994) was a British automotive engineer.
Early life
Initially a pupil at
Truro School
Truro School is a coeducational independent day and boarding school located in the city of Truro, Cornwall, England. It is the largest coeducational independent school in Cornwall with over 1050 pupils from pre-prep to sixth form. It is a membe ...
, he transferred to Emscote Lawn School, Warwick in 1934, when his father joined the
Triumph Motor Company
The Triumph Motor Company was a British car and motor manufacturing company in the 19th and 20th centuries. The marque had its origins in 1885 when Siegfried Bettmann of Nuremberg formed S. Bettmann & Co. and started importing bicycles from E ...
in
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed ...
as their Experimental Manager. Geoffrey moved to
Warwick School
Warwick School is a selective, independent day and boarding school in Warwick, England in the public school tradition.
Known until about 1900 as King's School, Warwick, it is believed to have been founded by Æthelflæd of Mercia in 914 A ...
in April 1937 and took his
School Certificate there in 1939.
At the start of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, Geoffrey his mother and brothers moved back to Cornwall, whereupon Geoffrey studied metallurgy at the
Camborne School of Mines
The Camborne School of Mines ( kw, Scoll Balow Cambron), commonly abbreviated to CSM, was founded in 1888. Its research and teaching is related to the understanding and management of the Earth's natural processes, resources and the environment. ...
. Soon afterwards he became an apprentice at Cornercroft in
Coventry
Coventry ( or ) is a city in the West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its city status until the Middle Ages. The city is governed ...
and studied engineering at
Coventry Technical College. He joined the new
REME corps of the
Army
An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
in late 1943, serving in
Syria, the
Lebanon
Lebanon ( , ar, لُبْنَان, translit=lubnān, ), officially the Republic of Lebanon () or the Lebanese Republic, is a country in Western Asia. It is located between Syria to Lebanon–Syria border, the north and east and Israel to Blue ...
and
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Med ...
, reaching the rank of
Captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
.
The Donald Healey Motor Company Ltd
Demobilised in 1947, he joined
Armstrong Siddeley Motors as a development engineer. He stayed there for two years, before joining his father
Donald
Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name ''Dòmhnall''.. This comes from the Proto-Celtic *''Dumno-ualos'' ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). The final -''d'' in ''Donald'' is partly derived from a misinterpretation of th ...
in
Warwick
Warwick ( ) is a market town, civil parish and the county town of Warwickshire in the Warwick District in England, adjacent to the River Avon. It is south of Coventry, and south-east of Birmingham. It is adjoined with Leamington Spa and W ...
, also as Development Engineer. In 1949 the most sporting of all the Healeys, the Silverstone, was announced. It had a shorter chassis and stiffer springing and was capable of 107 mph. The cars had numerous competition successes including class wins in the 1947 and 1948 Alpine rallies and the 1949 Mille Miglia. It remains a highly sought after car to this day and many of the other Healeys have been converted into Silverstone replicas.
In 1952, a joint venture with the British Motor Corporation created the
Austin-Healey
Austin-Healey was a British sports car maker established in 1952 through a joint venture between the Austin division of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and the Donald Healey Motor Company (Healey), a renowned automotive engineering and ...
marque and later on the
Austin-Healey Sprite
The Austin-Healey Sprite is a small open sports car produced in the United Kingdom from 1958 until 1971. The Sprite was announced to the press in Monte Carlo by the British Motor Corporation on 20 May 1958, two days after that year's Monaco Gra ...
. When BMC was restructured as British Leyland in 1968, Donald Healey left to become a director of Jensen Motors and a result of this was the Lotus engined Jensen-Healey, which appeared in 1972 when the original 20-year agreement between Healey and Austin came to an end .
The Donald Healey Motor Company was finally sold to the Hamblin Group, although Healey Automobile Consultants and the engineering parts of the company remained in the hands of Geoffrey and Donald Healey. Geoffrey later returned to the Rover Group and until his retirement worked as a vehicle test engineer running test programmes in UK and overseas.
The Healey Frogeye was the last car to bear the Healey name. It was conceived by Keith Brading of the Frogeye Car Company and approved by Donald, who enthused about the new Frogeye concept and insisted that Healey Automobile Consultants should be involved with the project. Geoffrey assessed the car as "brilliant" and took every opportunity to work with Keith, though commitment to Rover precluded any formal collaboration. However, thirteen months to the day after DMH's demise, a consultancy agreement was signed between Frogeye and Healey Automobile Consultants and the Healey Frogeye was manufactured under Geoffrey's guidance until after his death in 1994.
Postscript
Two years after his death on 29 April 1994, his life story was published as "The Healey Story". This has been reviewed as "a Cornish father and son partnership and their 30-year involvement in the motor industry. The cars they made are still highly sought-after in Europe, the US and Australia, where many of the specials Geoffrey Healey prepared can now be found."
Geoffrey's widow, Margot A-M Healey (née Murcell), died on 30 November 2015, aged 88, after being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.
References
"More Healeys" Second Edition, Geoffrey Healey . Haynes Publishing Group (1990)
'The Healey Story: A Dynamic Father and Son Partnership and Their World-beating Cars'. Geoffrey Healey . G.T.Foulis & Co (1996) (Haynes Group)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Healey, Geoffrey Cannon
1922 births
1994 deaths
People from Perranporth
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers officers
British Army personnel of World War II
People educated at Truro School
People educated at Warwick School
British automobile designers