Be careful and don't jump to conclusions.

Maybe an Austin Healy.

When I was in school us kids did not have cars back then in the 50's. An older guy would pull up in an MG TD every day as we walked to the bus and pick up the schools blonde bombshell.

Grrr.

I did get and drive for a long time a 1956 Corvette with the 265. It was set up for racing with 'fast' steering. It's brakes were not great but it would blow the doors in on that whatever it is you showed.

Has Healy like front fenders and headlights also seems to remind me of a Cisitalia. I would say it's Italian.

This car was built by Eddie Miller. He was the nephew of Harry Miller of the Offenhauser engine. Eddie built this car completely by hand as a project for Studebaker. Eddie hand hammered out the body panels, formed the frame from sheet metal into rectangular tubing. The engine was a much modified Studebaker flat head 6. The transmission was a 5 speed operated by planetary gears and electric solenoids. This was about 1950. Studebaker decided not to pursue the sports car. He sold his design to a European car company.
I met Eddie about 33 years ago. He was an engineer at Rockwell International. He lived in Richardson, Texas and worked together with my best friend of what is now 53years. Eddie's lakester has been renovated and has won top awards at Pebble Beach.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/f...ghlight=eddie+miller

Eddie was quite a character. Early in his career he designed products for Pachmeyer. He had 2 High Walls that he built from scratch in 60% scale. They were chambered in 22Magnum. He was close enough with Winchester to have them roll stamp Winchester on the barrel. He tried to teach me how to gas weld aluminum. He adjusted the torch and got behind me and reached around and held my hands. He told me what to look for and guided me. I just could never do it.
His Son in California has the car and I guess his personal items. He is a historian in the early hot rod and race car world. I gathered through the years that Eddie and Son were not close.

That is a modified Austin Healey. This type of modification was done because the grille on the original Austin Healey models seemed awkward. The modification is relatively easily done as one only has to change the center front panel. See the photos below.

Biggest problem is the dates. The Austin Healy that you picture didn't exist in 1950. Eddie's car had an aluminum body. He fashioned a new hood from steel to replace the original that was ruined when a piece of steel fell on it from the ceiling of his garage.
As I said,"Don't be clever and jump to conclusions".

Gerard,
Additional info and items that you can search. As I said, Eddie's Uncle was Harry Miller. You can search the Miller front wheel drive race cars with his Miller engines. They evolved into Meyer-Drake and then Offenhauser engines. Eddie SR. was an engineer, mechanic, with Auburn Dusenberg racecars. Eddie Jr. took his Dad's idea and built his Bonneville race car. It is called the Miller Lakester. He designed and built his chain drive quick change gear box. It only ran 156MPH in 1950 with the flathead Pontiac motor. It is now in the Utah Bonneville museum.Don Ferguson bought it and restored it before it went to Pebble Beach and into the museum.
Down the road.
Eddie was contacted by Lance Reventlow to help on his F1 dream. Lance was the son of Barbara Hutton,The Woolworth heiress and a Danish Count Reventlow. Money was not a problem. Eddie designed a 4cyl desmodromic valved engine for it. They raced a couple races with it to debug it. Reventlow lost interest and sold his facilities to Carroll Shelbly. Eddie solved a lot of problems that Rockwell International(Collins Radio) had with the Tacamo cable antennea. It was some kind of wire antennea that was on a real and was let out for a length of a mile or so. They had a lot of problems with it early on and Eddie straightened it out. My oldest Son worked with Eddie at that time while he was in college and my best friend helped Eddie with the design work.
You can search all of this on the net. His son Jim sent me the picture of the"roadster" sitting in his garage in Calif. Jim is the curator and historian of the American Hot Rod Foundation.

A picture of Eddie's rootbeer color Lakester.

I think the 1950s hand hammered aluminum body story got crossed over to the wrong photos.
It is clear that the show car was fabricated aluminum. The plaque also said it was a 1950 car.

It is highly likely that the other car is nothing but a massaged Austin Healey and the dates are confused about it.

In the same manner you can say you developed a 5 speed transmission using planetary gears and solenoids. That is just a good description of an overdrive transmission from that era.
Only you can't really do much hand anything with a transmission unless you do not need it to last very long.

Most engineers can sit around and BS about the stuff they have designed and it sounds like something that came out of the blue but that is not often the case.

I worked with a guy that built his own "wet" submarine from a air craft wing tank. It appeared on the cover of one of the magazines like Popular Mechanics back in the 1950s. He later sold plans of the "submarine" including a set to the US government. His expertise was heliarc welding and sheet metal fabrication. He welded .060 thick 5052-H32 aluminum on a production basis and stainless much thinner. He also worked with one of the leading heart surgeons to develop heart valves.
His one of his hobbies and part times jobs was anything related to scuba diving. I forget the exact numbers but he said he had something like 12 dual tanks and 17 singles. He retrieved lost boats, motors, false teeth (yes it was a good story) rings and of course bodies.

Both cars had hand hammered aluminum bodies. I have had the roadster in my shop on a lift to allow Eddie to check out a few things. The planetary gear set up was multiple and multiple solenoids.
You might check with his son Jim and get back to us. You are speculating and have not seen the vehicle or met the gentleman.
I'm sure your bud is a talented and gifted guy. Oh by the way, Eddie gas welded aluminum thinner than that building both the Lakester and the Roadster.

Butch, I think you should check the facts again with Jim. He is mistaken about the body of the car in your original photo.

I do not know about the mechanical side but most of the body is that of an Austin Healey 100/4.



The center front section has been modified to a rectangular grille but the hood over the engine is the short one as in this photo and as fitted to the four cylinder engined Austin Healeys.



In your original photo, look at the position of the windscreen wiper drives, the front turn signals, the door handle, the dash mounted rear view mirror, the fender mounted side mirror, the curvature of the line over the front wheel from behind the front bumper to behind the front wheel, the curve of the line where the windscreen fits onto the cowl, the curve of the line at the bottom of the body between the front and rear wheel and the line where a trim strip was fitted that runs from a little way behind the front wheel arch to two thirds up the rear wheel arch. All are identical to the lines on the Healey photographs.



The modified car has a bumper from a later model 6 cylinder car with curved ends. The bumper overriders were identical on all models and identical to the modified car as well. The wire wheel (left front) is fitted with a typical Austin Healy three blade knock off as is found on all Austin Healeys. The majority of knock offs had two blades, Jaguar, Triumph and Morgan, to name some. The modified car has a more curved windscreen from a later model as well. The flatter windscreens on the old models had uprights that curved to point inwards. Later models had straitish uprights and so on.

Not getting into a pissing contest here. All you have to do is contact Jim by email. Go to the American Hot Rod Foundation website. They should have contact info there.

Can't find any except a phone number and a snail mail address. But it is not important enough to phone or write a letter.

Butch I find it just amazing that anyone can build a fender or hood from a sheet of metal. Beside the fact he built what today is considered a paddle shift trans from scratch. Great stuff.

Eddie told me when the unseen side of the metal work was good, the outside would be acceptable.

A.C. Bristol

Different lines altogether.

You might provide something more than passing off a story of limited logic.

Have you ever really seen anyone gas weld aluminum? What is passed off as gas welding is actually aluminum brazing.
It is normally welded by GTAW by anyone that knows the process. It is AKA called heliarc.

My so called speculation is based on a lot of experience with fabricated and welded aluminum parts and experience with people getting their stories confused.
I can also interpret photos pretty well. In the absence of anything else that makes sense I will believe what I see.

quote:

Originally posted by butchlambert:
Both cars had hand hammered aluminum bodies. I have had the roadster in my shop on a lift to allow Eddie to check out a few things. The planetary gear set up was multiple and multiple solenoids.
You might check with his son Jim and get back to us. You are speculating and have not seen the vehicle or met the gentleman.
I'm sure your bud is a talented and gifted guy. Oh by the way, Eddie gas welded aluminum thinner than that building both the Lakester and the Roadster.

Definition of braze.
form, fix, or join by soldering with an alloy of copper and zinc at high temperature.

Don't think this applies in this case. Yes, I have personally watched him do it.
You know, I have a lot of experience in some areas, but I don't know it all.
What about you?

Don't really know about the picture or any of the parties involved but I would concur with Gerard on the picture. I purchased new a Healey 3000-6 in 1960. It was a model BN-6 if memory serves meaning it had a small (and I mean small) set of rear seats. It was a partial steel partial aluminum car. The outer fenders from the center chrome strip on the fender was steel, all the center section of the body was aluminum. You could get an all aluminum one at the time but the extra cost for the fenders was prohibitive for me at the time. Mine had Laycock de Normanville electric overdrive with a switch on the dash. If memory serves worked on top 3 gears. I was confirmed A-H bug at the time and my Brother-in-Law at the time bought a 100-4 he liked mine so much. I had much exposure and familiarity with them at that period. I still think they are one of the most attractive English cars ever built. Most aficionadoes seem to like the Italian designs best but I find it hard to compete with an A-H an AC Bristol of an Aston Martin coupe of any model after a DB2. Just one old mans rambling opinion, just don't see how Gerard can be incorrect in his appraisal of the photo.