This is the story of the Ward Special at the beginning:
"On 27 January 1955, Austin Healey 100 chassis no. BN1/22490 rolled off the Longbridge production line. The car was a black RHD export model destined for Sydney, Australia. (...). Its engine no. was the same as the chassis no. - H1B22490-M – and the body no. 7491. Some time in the next few months the car was shipped to Australia.(...)
The following history has been pieced together from information provided by the Healey Factory, and from conversations with most of the previous owners – Clive Millis, Lindsay Hughes, Peter Marshell, John Best and Peter Rowland – and with Sid Ward’s son Andrew. Iain McPherson knows the car well as in the early ‘70’s the then owner worked close by to Iain’s work. Iain has been able to fill in many details. (...). Clive Millis, the next owner, reports that the car was extensively damaged within months of delivery in a street racing accident at a place known as “Death Dip” on the Hume Highway at Craigieburn North of Melbourne. Clive says the damage was such that the car could have gone “end over end”. He bought the wreck as an insurance write-off (although the Vicroads records don’t show this event), straightened the chassis and fitted an Ausca fibreglass body, which was a direct copy of a Maserati A6GCS/53. The Ausca bodies were built by Paul England who worked for Repco. Only seven bodies were made, which were mostly fitted to Healeys, MGAs and Triumph TRs (...)
With the Ausca body (see photo) Clive registered the car GTV 116 in January 1959. He had found that the original bonnet wouldn’t clear the Healey rocker cover, so he had Baker and Tait of Richmond build an aluminium bonnet. Coincidentally, the tradesman who hand-crafted the bonnet was Sid Ward, who later built the aluminium coupe body the car wears today. Presumably it was at this time that the steering column was lowered an inch or two at the firewall. The car was painted metallic silver grey, and had an aluminium grille surround built by Tishlers grilles (...)
In 1967, Lindsay commissioned renowned coachbuilder Sid Ward (who lived a couple of streets away from Iain McPherson) to remove the Ausca body and build a coupe body he had loosely sketched.(...)
