When Joe Berecz parked his car for the final time, he did it with the same care and precision that he brought to the surgical suite: he placed rectangles of plywood under the tires to protect them from the moisture in the concrete floor, waxed the paint and covered his prized machine with a swaddling, custom-made cover.
Joe’s Austin-Healey 3000 wasn’t just a car. It was a philosophical statement, a symbol of accomplishment, and a carrier of dreams. He bought it brand new in 1966 from a dealer in Montreal after finishing his medical residency. At the time, the Healey was state-of-the-sports car art: low slung body, a flat dash studded with aircraft-style toggle switches and racing-style wire wheels with knock-off hubs instead of lug nuts.
When he put the Healey away for the winter in the fall of 2010, Joe had no way of knowing that this would be the last time. A few months later, he died of a heart attack. Ever since, his beloved Healey has been parked in the garage of his daughter’s house, exactly as he left it. There are 32,000 miles on the odometer.
The Austin-Healey has always had a special mystique. With the possible exception of the Shelby 427 Cobra and the Jaguar E-Type, there has never been a more beautiful roadster than the Healey.
In Windsor, Joe’s hometown, Anita, his widow, took me to the garage where Joe parked the Healey five years ago. We pulled off the cover to reveal the car that her husband had loved for so long – a compact red machine that epitomized British style back in the days when the Beatles and Carnaby Street were changing the world.
The Healey had a lovely, human patina. I could see where Joe’s hands had worn the Bakelite steering wheel rim, and how his shoes had left their mark on the tiny pedals. This was a car filled with memories – and perhaps the ghost of the man who owned it.
Anita remembers the day when Joe brought the Healey home for the first time. It was a summer day in 1966. They were living in Montreal, where Joe had just completed his surgical internship. Anita was studying law, and they had three small children – two girls, one boy. Anita had no idea that her husband was planning to buy a car, and didn’t understand the point of a tiny machine with a flip-down top, seats for two, and a trunk barely large enough to hold a suitcase.
The Healey became a fixture in their lives. Joe loaded the kids into the parcel shelf behind the seats (this was in the days before seat belts) and drove them around Notre Dame de Grace. In 1967, they left the kids with a baby sitter and drove the Healey to Boston, Rhode Island and Martha’s Vineyard. Joe drove and Anita read the map, which wasn’t easy in a roadster with the top down – it flapped in the wind like a flag. “I was a bad map reader,” Anita says. “We went in circles all around Boston.”
In 1968, they moved to Albany, N.Y., so Joe could do a surgical residency at the Albany Medical Centre. They had two cars – the Healey and a Pontiac sedan. The kids wanted to ride in the Healey. They piled in and Joe dropped the top. Anita followed in the Pontiac, which was loaded with luggage. “The kids wanted to be in the Healey,” Anita recalls. “They loved that car. It was a toy for them. The only one who didn’t love it was me.”
Anita and Joe met in 1957, in Windsor, where they were both born and raised. Joe was visiting a neighbour across the street from Anita’s parent’s home, tinkering with a car in the driveway. Anita wandered over. Joe was a science student, dreaming about becoming a surgeon. He loved cars, especially British ones. They married in 1959.
By the mid-1960s, they were on their way to a dream existence: he was a doctor, she was a lawyer. Joe was noted for his surgical skills and a sublime sense of proportion that made him excellent at plastic surgery. And his talents weren’t limited to medicine – Joe was also a concert violinist and a gifted saxophone player.
In 1969, they hit a speed bump. Joe had his first heart attack. There was no warning. “We thought we were on the road to heaven,” Anita says. “Everything was perfect. Then it just stopped.” When he got home from the hospital, Joe couldn’t go up and down the stairs. Six months later, he was back at work.
Over the years, Joe bought and sold a long series of Jaguars. He loved British cars. “The insurance bills were crazy,” says Anita. “But this was his passion.”
And the Healey was always there. They moved back to Windsor, where Joe was on call for four different hospitals. Joe would drive the Healey and take one of the kids with him when he could. He drove the kids to soccer practice in the Healey, took it to his golf club and tooled around on weekends with the top down. “It was his tranquilizer,” Anita says. “It was his pride and joy. When it was here, my car had to sit outside.”
When their son Steven was a teenager, they took a weekend trip to Point Pelee, Ont., in the Healey. Steven was taller than Anita, so she rode in the jump seat. Her hair was flying, bugs were hitting her like buckshot and she was sitting in an unpadded metal compartment. The Healey’s lever-action shock absorbers did little to cushion the ride. Anita remembers the conversation: “They’d turn and say, ‘Isn’t this fun?’ And I’d say, ‘How many more miles till we get home?’”
Only after Joe died did Anita really come to understand why her husband had loved the little red car so much.
“I’m not a creative person,” she says. “I’m a linear thinker. That’s what made me a good lawyer. But Joe was an aesthetic man. He had an eye for it. He loved vehicles and he loved design. He was deeply creative. That’s what made him a good surgeon. The Healey was the symbol of our beginnings, our future. When Joe got it, all we thought about was the end of exams and the beginning of our adult lives.”
As we sat in Anita’s kitchen, the table was covered with papers that documented Joe’s obsession with his Healey. There was the original bill of sale, stacks of carefully filed service records and a stack of catalogues from a place in the United States called Healey Heaven – a place where Joe had spent a considerable amount of money over the years on parts and accessories. Then there were the bills from a 1997 restoration, where Joe flew to the United States to buy a second Healey that he cannibalized for parts.
“It made me crazy sometimes,” Anita says. “But this was his baby.”
After Joe died, several people suggested that Anita sell the Healey. But she couldn’t. The car she never really liked was a powerful symbol of her husband. And so it stayed in the garage, wrapped in its cover, its tires protected by the plywood squares Joe had placed beneath them. But now, almost five years later, she’s decided it’s time. Some time soon, she will place an advertisement. It could read: “Car for sale. Memories included.”
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