This is the authorised biography of one of the best-liked
bad boys in British motorsport.
John Chatham, driver, racer, repairer, rebuilder, tuner,
trader and lover of Austin-Healeys, was in the words of Geoffrey Healey
“uncontrollable” in his youth, and has only mildly mellowed with age.
Burly and genial, but formidably competitive, and not above
bending the rules when he thought he could get away with it, to many he is the
archetypal club racer. John is so synonymous with Austin-Healeys that the most
famous racing Healey in the world, DD300, is so well-known mainly because John
campaigned it for decades, notching up tens of thousands of racing miles.
But his career embraces far more than one car, and until
this biography no-one had attempted to fill in the gaps.
John Chatham: Mr Big Healey is not a dry description of one club race after
another.
It does include a list of John’s principal sporting
achievements, but no complete record exists of the hundreds of events which
made up his competitive career, so the writer has not attempted to compile one.
Instead Norman Burr, who was himself acquainted with John in his youth, has
created a more rounded and personal account, full of motoring and sporting
anecdotes, but also telling the story of John’s family, his work, his business,
his three wives and his lovers.
John has a comprehensive photo library from which the book
is generously illustrated, with cartoons added to illustrate some of the
moments that a camera was not around to record. Thoroughly politically
incorrect even by the standards of the 1960s, it’s an account which will strike
a chord not only with admirers of Big Healeys, but also with anyone who
believes that independent thinking, and the courage to apply and enjoy it, is
the greatest virtue of all.