Austin-Healeys keep punctuating the life of John and Marsha Steele like the Blackfoot River in Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It.”
Steele, who grew up in Scott City, Kan., and now lives in Overland Park, said he became enamored with Healeys because a friend had one when they were at K-State. “It’s still the best-looking car ever,” he said.
In 1960, Steele bought his first Austin-Healey, a white 1956, while working in California, and it was his only transportation while finishing college at Kansas State.
In 1962, the Steeles, now married, piled all of their earthly belongings into the Healey and headed to California. They lived there for a short while before moving back to Kansas.
“I had my hairdryer under my feet,” Marsha said, “and I still have scars on my arms from the sun.”
The Steeles had their white roadster for four years, but traded it for a Ford Falcon convertible when their son was born. The Healey had more than 300,000 miles on it.
In the course of his adult life, Steele, now 73, had several cars, ranging from a Model T touring car to a tiny Berkeley roadster, and he restored several more, including a Jaguar XK-140. For two years in the mid-1960s, his work car was a tiny 1958 Isetta. He also owned another Austin-Healey for a while, but sold it without finishing its restoration.
His current Healey is a 1956 BN2 that he bought in 2007. He patiently rebuilt the engine to specifications that are similar to that of the high-performance 100M model, and he had Kelly Williams of Williams Body Shop in Stilwell finish the body in Reno Red, an Austin-Healey color that was available for just one year. Steele recovered the seats in his basement and installed new carpet. His grandson, Miles Steele, helped him hang the doors after the car came back from being painted.
Steele said that working on his car was restorative therapy after treatment for cancer. He restored the car to be a “nice driver,” not a show car, but he has displayed it at a couple of local car shows. So far, he said, he has driven it fairly short distances but plans to stretch its legs more because he is sure of its reliability. His long-term goal is to drive it to the 2012 Austin-Healey Club of America╒s national meeting in Louisville, Ky.
The main cargo on that Healey trip will be decades of memories.
