Junkyard Gem: 1974 Jensen-Healey | Autoblog

North American athletics-car buyers in 1974 faced an exciting problem. Say you experienced $7,000 to commit (about $39,000 in 2020 bucks) and you wished a light-weight European convertible with a good deal of ability and slinky superior seems to be. The Porsche 911 and Jaguar E-Sort ended up out of your selling price vary (and the 911 Targa wasn’t a accurate convertible, anyway), the low-priced MGB, Triumph TR6, and Fiat 124 Activity Spider ended up also slow, and the Triumph Stag’s Rube Goldberg-made engine frightened anyone. But wait around! Alfa Romeo offered the beautiful and fast Spider Veloce 2000 for $6,550, even though your area Jensen dealer offered the devilish-seeking Jensen-Healey for just $five,545 and the Jensen-Healey was lighter and much more potent than the Alfa. Here’s 1 of these cars in Colorado, consigned to the crusher’s waiting around place after a lot of a long time of awaiting repairs that in no way arrived.

The coronary heart of the Jensen-Healey was the Lotus 907 slant-4 engine, the screaming “torqueless ponder” that forced drivers to retain the tachometer needle in the alarming element of the dial considerably of the time. The glovebox-complete-of-cocaine Lotus Elites and Esprits of the early Disco Period arrived with the 907 underneath the hood. An individual grabbed the cylinder head off this 1 in advance of I received listed here.

You can just make out the dust-shadow of a California license plate, apparently 1 of the blue-on-white embossed work from the 1987-1994 time period. Most likely this car moved to Colorado twenty five a long time ago and in no way moved underneath its very own ability once more.

Out of doors storage of a convertible in no way goes very well in the Significant Plains weather. The solar nukes the major and then the critters make them selves at residence. Just about every winter season, the car fills up with snow, which then melts and rusts holes in the floor.

This is the 3rd Jensen-Healey I’ve uncovered in a boneyard because I began this task, and all a few have been 1974 styles. The Jensen-Healey could be obtained listed here for the 1972 by 1975 design a long time.

The stays of a pretty-superior-by-late-eighties-standards Pioneer KE-2222 SuperTuner cassette deck bleaches in the Colorado Springs solar.

The 1974 Jensen-Healey weighed two,116 pounds and experienced a hundred and forty horsepower underneath the hood, offering it a ability-to-excess weight ratio of fifteen.one pounds for each horse. The 1974 Alfa Spider moved its two,220 pounds with 129 horsepower for a 17.two lb/hp ratio. In the meantime, the hairiest manufacturing unit-created ’74 Corvette’s ratio was 17.two lb/hp, and even the Porsche 911S (13.9 lb/hp) and Ferrari 308 Dino (fourteen.3 lb/hp) just hardly surpassed the Jensen in the ability-to-excess weight office. Certain, all these cars out-torqued the Jensen-Healey by several parsecs and experienced no Prince of Darkness electrical bits, but what a offer!