Parting with an Alvis

One day your Alvis will find a new home and the archivists would like to keep track of its continuing history. While you may remember to tell us, you may forget or not be able to. We have devised a form for you to print out, fill in and put inside your V5C or log book so whoever fills in the form on change of owner has a reminder to let us know. Here it is, just click on Owner change form to download a pdf version to print out.

Our first video has been posted on the Speed Models page and stars a Speed 20 SA which changed hands recently. It may not be to BBC standard but hopefully is informative and entertaining.

We realised that there is a lot of material on the Fourteen ‘page’ alone (almost 100 pages worth) so Eileen has agreed to host a new separate blog alongside this one dedicated solely to the Fourteen. It will make following comments and replies easier while retaining core information on this site. Why not log on and become a Follower –

http://www.alvisfourteen.wordpress.com

Dan Geoghegan and Bicester Heritage have rescued some aero engine records from - from their Twitter feed @BicesterH — Dan Geoghegan and Bicester Heritage have rescued some aero engine records – from their Twitter feed @BicesterH

Since the last post which mentioned the trustees’ Bourne Museum visit we came across an Alvis link to ERA and BRM. Harry Mundy was an apprentice at Alvis and mentions his involvement in the gearbox design of the 12/70 and 3 litre gearbox in an article in Autocar in 1958, when he was Technical Editor.

Thanks to Wikipedia…..

Harry Mundy (1915 – 1988) was educated at King Henry VIII School in Coventry and went on to serve his apprenticeship with Alvis. He left them in 1936 to join English Racing Automobiles (ERA) in Bourne, Lincolnshire as a draughtsman. Also at ERA was Walter Hassan who became a lifelong friend and the two would work together later at Jaguar on engine development.

He left ERA in 1939 and returned to Coventry to work at the Morris Engines factory.

After World War II he moved to British Racing Motors (BRM) in 1946 as head of the design office, being involved in the design of the BRM V16 Formula One engine, before moving on again in 1950 to Coventry Climax engines as chief designer working on the FWA engine.

His career then took a change in direction and he moved into journalism becoming Technical Editor of The Autocar magazine in 1955 but while there he also worked on the design of the Ford based twin-cam engine for Lotus.

Mike Dunn recalls “I used to meet Harry every month at the Thursday Club. He was humorous and we exchanged many good stories.

He told me that Colin Chapman said that he would either pay Harry £200 for all of his design work on the twin cam version of the Ford 4-cylinder engine or he would pay him £1 for each engine that was produced. Harry was sad that he had chosen the first option without guessing that the engine would be used in a production car – the Lotus Cortina”

However, following Jaguar’s purchase of Coventry Climax in 1963. Walter Hassan persuaded Mundy to return to engineering where he and Walter Hassan developed the Jaguar V12 engine. Harry Mundy would stay with Jaguar until his retirement in 1980 after which he still did some consultancy work. He was the uncle of presenter Johnny Vaughan.