have been hopelessly infatuated with British cars since I was a teenager. My first was an MG Midget, and I've had everything from a Rover 2000 to a Jaguar XJS. I've always lusted after Healeys, though," notes Roger Los on the welcome page of the Big Healeys Web site. "They never really leave your blood."

Donald Mitchell Healey, a former British rally driver, created these infatuation-inducing cars shortly after World War II. Partnering with several individuals and manufacturers, Healey contributed to the production of the Nash-Healey, the Jensen-Healey and the Austin-Healey lines of cars for two decades, ultimately ceasing all production by 1968. The sports cars popularly known as the "Big Healeys" (from which Los derived his site name) include the Austin-Healey 100, 100 Six and 3000 models, as distinguished from the smaller, "bug-eyed" model, the Sprite.

Form Follows Function
Over the years, Los' perspective on the unusual cars has evolved from that of a lovesick teenager to that of a professional designer: "I love the purity of the Healey — there aren't many compromises made in allowing function to rule form," Los observes. "The lines are perhaps only bettered by the Jaguars of the period." As a self-described poor student in the late '80s, the now 32-year-old Los owned a series of MGB's and Triumphs: "I loved Jaguars, but who could afford 'em?" Los laments. "The lines of the Healey caught my fancy, and I thought I just might be able to get into one. I did, eventually, and 'just able' surely describes my purchase. Desperately worn out, potentially lethal and an environmental hazard, it still was pretty and a fine stout machine."

Los' first Healey, a black and silver 1959 100 Six, "looked okay, had a nice patina, as they say, but it was worn out and had brakes that were positively lethal which I couldn't afford to fix," Los recalls. "I figured out that I went through 17 cases of oil in the year I drove that car — about half on the ground and half out the pipe." Nevertheless, he found that the car was the cheapest he had owned: "It cost me about $150 over the year I had it," excluding the cost of gas or of the free-flowing oil. Los' second Healey, a blue 1962 3000 "was a bit less satisfying to own, but still a fun machine," he says. "I sold it three years ago to fund the purchase of a house."

Community Service
Before sacrificing his low-slung roadster for a roof over his head, Los launched Big Healeys in January 1996 to celebrate the cars he so loves. He used the project as a vehicle to teach himself HTML and to expand his professional skills to include Web design: "I had been working designing interfaces for CD-ROM products for several years and thought it would be fun to try it on the Web. I also wanted a showcase to show potential clients," Los explains. "That said, there was definitely an enthusiast part of me that wanted this to become a community resource."

Now that he is Healey-less, the site helps Los maintain a connection to the Healey community. True to his original aim, the site has since become a major resource among on-line Healey enthusiasts. Big Healeys is widely linked to from Healey sites Web-wide and the majority of the content appearing on the site — photos, statistics, personal anecdotes — has come pouring in from the many and far-flung site visitors. These days, however, Los has found himself too busy to devote much time to his popular site. "It's more fun for me to turn wrenches than to build pages about turning wrenches," Los says. With future plans to transform the owner registries into a bulletin-board system, with technical and for sale areas that can be updated automatically, Los hopes this will alleviate his time crunch and allow him to work on his cars — instead of on his Web site about cars — while continuing to serve his faithful audience.

Reported by Kara Reuter, cars.com

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IMAGE GALLERY
View period advertisements and visitors' photos of Big Healeys.

MY SPRITE SITE
Check out this Spridgeteer's site devoted to the restoration of a "little Healey."