Tag: Austin Healey 3000

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Longbridge Factory drawing office

Austin Design Office


THE new BMC. Drawing Office Building at Longbridge, will enable the main design forces of the group to be concentrated under one roof for the first time. Another big step forward in realizing the aims for which the BMC. was formed. It will be completed in June. 

At the moment the various design departments are scattered throughout the Corporation’s factories, making co-ordination difficult. The new building will help BMC. to pursue still more vigorously the policy of standardization and ‘commonization’ of components to achieve the greatest economies in production. 

A striking feature of the handsome new building, designed by the BMC. architects, Harry W. Weedon, FRIBA. & Partners, is the excellence of the working conditions. 

Design staff will enjoy an exceptional amount of natural light at their drawing-boards, as well as abundant fresh-air ventilation, with-out draughts. 

This vast general drawing office cost £550,000 and is nearly 60,000 sq.ft. in area as big as many a factory. (It is, incidentally, twice the area of the BMC. Joy Car Factory at Bargoed, where 350 people are employed.) 

It will receive a high degree of available daylight through six ‘monitors’-glass-sided raised portions in the roof. And on sunny days there need be no fears of the atmosphere getting uncomfortably hot; an efficient extraction system takes care of that. The air flow can be increased by 50 per cent. in warm weather. 

Artificial general lighting is provided by recessed fluorescent fittings with directional reflectors. The main entrance, with executive offices and conference room, faces one end of the lawn in front of the Administration Block-to which the Drawing Office is connected by a bridge with lifts at each end. Among other features are print rooms, and a special drawing office of 7,840 sq. ft. above the main executive offices. 

Mr. Geoffrey Eyre, BMC. Building Projects Engineer, told BMC. World: ‘The object of the exercise is to give the maximum daylight when it is there, and as much fresh air as we can possibly put in without draughts. ‘The lighting has been very carefully designed.’

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Breaking 200mph

On arriving at the Bonneville Salts Flats they found out that part of the normal track was breaking up. So it was necessary to move the measured mile closer to one end of the timing stretch, thereby reducing the length of the run-in in this direction. Donald Healey drove the car on the straight-away runs and raised the International Class D for 5 kilometres to 182.2 mph and for 10 miles to 181 mph The car was timed over the kilometre at 192.6mph, thereby breaking an American National record. various other runs were completed and one such run broke the magic 200 mph barrier.

Then Carrol Shelby, the Texan driver who competed in many European events during the 1954 season, took over and attacked the International Class D record for the hour, which was duly obtained at a speed of 156.7m.p.h. For this run, a 10-mile circle was used, a course which seemed almost one long straight when seen from behind the wheel of a normal saloon but which seemed more like a rather difficult fast bend from the Streamliner’s cockpit. The car proved very stable, which was indeed fortunate, for conditions were by no means ideal, gusts of up to 30 mph. sweeping across the Salt Flats. Moreover, owing to the complete absence of trees or any other vegetation, the driver received no advance warning of a gust before it struck the car. This is where the tail fin proved to be of real value in such circumstances.

Austin-Healey at speed on the 22 August 1954 on the Bonneville salts USA this modified Austin Healey “100” was timed by the American Automobile association officials over a measured mile at a mean speed of 192.6 MPH. At the same time a number of Class D international records were broken. It is on such occasions that research and development are put to the severest test which motoring have so far devised – record-breaking.