ContentJ. Michael Hemsley

As Europe tried to recover from World War II, manufacturers began producing small cars to satisfy the need for personal transportation. There were cycle cars, micro cars, bubble cars. They were cheap to build and buy, and they were economical to drive. As manufacturing was re-established and “real” cars began coming off the assembly lines, more people turned to larger, more comfortable automobiles.

It’s usually the other way around. A roadcar becomes a racecar. This 1956 Austin-Healey 100 was rescued from a certain fate of returning to the earth as it sat and rusted after an apparent career as a racecar. There was a time when an old racecar was only that – an old racecar. Thankfully, Charles Warner loved to build nice Healeys, and saw the potential in this Healey 100. It became the eighteenth, and last, Austin-Healey he restored.

The hunt for interesting automobiles to profile often leads to some very unusual vehicles. One-off vehicles do not lend themselves to the standard profile format, but they are much too interesting to ignore. The subjects of this article are three of those unusual automobiles.