Leonard “Mac” McGrady standing among a few of the Nash-Healeys of his collection, including several of the split-windshield Panelcraft models, including one in all aluminum.

Leonamrd “Mac” McGrady’s collection of Nash-Healeys includes both of the special-bodied cars built for the 1953 Le Mans 24-hour race., both not surprisingly unrestored.

 

His addiction began in 1953, explains Leonard Nelson “Mac” McGrady. As a son of an automobile dealer, McGrady had seen many cars, but when he first saw a Nash-Healey, he knew it was a car he would have to own.

That special day didn’t come until 1968. Then, says Mac: “If you have one Nash-Healey, you have to have another. Parts, you know. And then if another comes along, it’s hard to resist. After you have about eight of them, people start calling you.”

Now tucked in McGrady’s barn 30 miles northeast of Baltimore are sixty-three of the 506 Nash-Healeys ever made. He has coupes and roadsters, the early Panelcraft aluminum cars, and  Pininfarina steel-bodied cars (including the first Pininfrarina car previously owned by Nash President George Mason). They’ve come from as near as a mile away – a car that Mac pursued for 15 years – and from as far as Key West and England. He owns one car that a U. S. Air Force colonel raced in the Soviet Union. He has both the special 1953 Le Mans team cars. He recently acquired a 1951 coupe, with a “funky aerodynamic body,” that Donald Healey himself wrecked in the 1952 Coupe des Alpes. McGrady even has the X7, the Tickford-bodied prototype (with Tickford’s first-ever power convertible top) that lost out to Pininfarin’s design.

What McGrady’s cars have in common is that all, in varying degrees, are unrestored. McGrady doesn’t care. He sees himself as the protector of the species. He won’t part with any of his cars because, he says: “Once you do, it’s gone forever. Parts, you know.”

So if anybody knows where the Nash-Healey called the Ted Williams Special is, please call. McGrady would like to park it next to the standard roadster in which Williams broke his leg.

Addendum: So what happened to Mac McGrady and his retinue of unrestored Nash-Healeys? It has been almost 35 years (as this is written) since this article appeared in Automobile Magazine and what I found in a web search was, well, fragmentary. The Baltimore Sun published a profile of McGrady was  in a 2005 article  It’s mostly behind a paywall, but I was able learn that his collection had expanded to 80 cars. An article in Hemmings published in 2018, was primarily about Nash-Healy, but it confirmed that McGrady’s collection had to expanded to 80 cars, but no larger.

Does anyone know the whereabouts of Mac McGrady and/or his collection? If so, please let us know in the comments below.

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