Alvis Archive

An appeal in http://www.alvis14.com for news of the whereabouts of a Tickford TA 14, registered KLM 51, chassis no. 22408 has gone unanswered. She is still shown on the current DVLA site so perhaps is sitting quietly in a garage or possibly has gone abroad. Black with a tan roof she was last heard of in 1989 in West Kensington, London. A relative of an early owner would love to track her down. Please contact Eileen on eileen4ta.tb14s@rocketmail.com if you have any knowledge to help locate her after 1989, also a photo would be much appreciated. We know she went to International Alvis Day in 1986. 

A successful appeal for information has united the lady looking for history of the Keddie family, see Old photos, with the holder of the extensive photo archives and medals and they will be meeting soon. Steve Horne had already scanned all the over 300 photos and local press cuttings anyway and additional copies are archived in the Essex Records Office, preserving Essex’s early automotive history and the key role of EMC and SDAC in hill-climbing, in Essex and nationally at that time (EMC ran Kop events).

We also tracked down two “lost” TD21s to Switzerland, one the former Graber of the late Christo van Zweeden and the other a Park Ward, 26778, now in a collection near Bern.

In the August 2021 edition of Classic and Sports Car, Simon Charlesworth writes about his namesake coachbuilder…

We were pleased to receive an unpublished work from the late Roy Probert which we intend to publish, “One Man’s Alvis” – it is not about cars but a fascinating read about life at Alvis after cars. We will be publishing extracts in due course and invite expressions of interest for a printed version.

We hold stocks of Roy’s first book “Leonides” and copies are available by post, see AERO ENGINES.

A major piece of work of digitising almost 1,000 pages of the The Leonides Handbook and Parts Catalogue is coming to fruition and owners of an engine are invited to express interest in receiving a copy.

On August 22nd at Mallory Park there will be a VSCC Centenary Race for Alvis cars and it is hoped that a special area for spectating Alvis cars and owners will be available.

On the same weekend a two-day event “Passion for Power” at Tatton Park, Cheshire is taking place on 21^st and 22^nd August with AAT Trustee Chris Taylor organising the Alvis stand in a great location within the show ground. You can book your place attending on either the Saturday or Sunday or both days.

Contact Chris at: chris@ctml.co.uk with the details of the car that you wish to display and he will make all the arrangements. Entry is FREE to exhibitors.

The final deadline for booking is Wednesday 14^th July 2021.

Hayley Kent, Roy’s daughter writes:

Roy Probert passed away peacefully on the 14th June 2021 at the age of 86.

Roy’s passion for the ALVIS will always be remembered. He started with the company in 1967 and progressed to Quality Control Manager giving the company 28 years service. When Roy retired at the age of 60 he set up his own consultancy business which took him back to the ALVIS offering them support due to the knowledge he had on the Aero Engine.

Roy went on to write a book called ,”LEONIDES The ALVIS Aero Engine” as he wanted to put what he knew so much about and had learnt on this subject over those years into print. A second book was written by Roy Probert called ‘One Man’s ALVIS’ and he gives recollections of the former company in his own words from 1967 to the severance of its manufacturing associations with Coventry. To date this one hasn’t been published but shows one man’s passion for a company he loved working for and continued to love until he died.

Roy Probert leaves behind him two daughters who live in Solihull/Coventry and both keen to keep his memory alive. Roy Probert will be remembered as a man who had a wealth of knowledge of these engines and who will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

The funeral service is at the Robin Hood Crematorium, Shirley, Solihull on Wednesday 7th July at 11.30am. It is being broadcast on:

https://watch.obitus.com username sulo1387 password 971200

Roy has requested donations, if desired, to Cancer Research UK.

For more about Roy click AERO ENGINES

The dining experience at Bowcliffe is something we like to share with members so we have decided to launch The Alvis Dining Club at Bowcliffe Hall which will meet every Third Wednesday for lunch in the Drivers Club – July 21st; August 18th; September 15th; October 20th. Why not join us?

Two Three Litres have taken to the road in Switzerland after being restored, a Graber TE21 cabriolet in Lugano and a TC21/100 Tickford in the canton of Zurich.

“I want to let you know that we have finished our work on 25526 / JRD 500. We passed the Strassenverkehrsamt Zürich and got the approval to drive around with it.

It was a great pleasure to restore that car and now we can enjoy the beautiful design of the TC 21 drophead. We are getting many compliments.

We plan to come to England to one of the meetings of the Alvis Owner Club, as soon as Covid allows. It probably might be rather 2022 that 2021, but we will see and let you know.

I want to thank you and your colleagues from the Alvis Owner Club, we got valuable help from many people, especially Malcolm Kindell, Chris Prince, Red Triangle, Jonathan Huggett, Richard Bagge, Alan Mills and Dieter Schätti in Switzerland. The AOC is a great thing and I highly appreciate your work and your help.

I look forward to seeing you and your colleagues soon.

Many thanks for your help and all the best

Kind regards

Leo Schmid (12000 CH)

While current Alvis photos profilerate thanks to the smart phone, finding a good period shot by a professional is something archivists enjoy. Even better is when someone sends us one. We can often identify the car but it isn’t always the case, especially if there is no registration number. In the last few days five such photos have come our way and the first came from the great grand daughter of the 1921 owner of a 10/30 who is researching the family history.

“I’m looking for an Alvis that was owned by my great grandfather. It was used in several speed trials and hill climbs in 1921. I know it’s probably long gone but I’d love to see if someone still loves it. His name was Captain GDF Keddie. he was a very keen racing driver. He also had a Silver Hawk (one of maybe a dozen made) which actually beat Raymond Mays’ Cordon Rouge Bugatti at the Southend Speed Trial of 1922. I’m also hunting down the chap who owns one of the only Silver Hawks left as I’d love to see the car in the flesh.“

The other four photos were sent by Tom Clarke, Rolls-Royce historian. They come from the Jack Barclay Collection and as JB was not an Alvis dealer, are of cars which we assume to have been sold secondhand. Two have registration numbers and the first, although now long gone, has an interesting history.

This car was mentioned in The Registrar’s Column, ‘Gilding the Lily’ in AOC Bulletin 521 Page 31.
“The car had first belonged to a Miss B. J. M. Streather, of Hendon, Middlesex. This was evidently not Miss Streather’s first Alvis. She had competed with a Speed Twenty SA in the 1933 RAC Rally, gaining a 3rd Class award and finishing 74 of 94. By the 1935 RAC Rally she had acquired the SC tourer, obtaining a 3rd Class award, and better still in 1936, with a 2nd Class award.

Alvis Works records tell us that Dr. Grocott acquired the car by November 1938 and kept it throughout the War, and certainly into the fifties.

No matter how perfect and iconic Alvis cars are and will continue to be, there have always been those who have modified particular examples with varying degrees of success. Examples abound of this practice, but perhaps none are more interesting than the modifications carried out on two Alvis cars by Dr. John Grocott of Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent. Grocott was by account a distinguished surgeon, and indeed his applications in the metal show such attention to detail as would have been required in the operating theatre. At some stage Grocott evidently decided to dispense with the Cross and Ellis tourer body and designed a semi-aerodynamic fixed head coupe body of his own, after the pattern of the Embiricos Bentley. Past President Ernest Shenton tells me that there were two other people instrumental in this car’s construction, these being Tom Byatt, of Trentham, together with Bob Bullard. Unfortunately no details have survived of the exact construction methods used, but the machine was certainly spectacular, as the photograph shows.

The other Alvis to receive the Grocott individual attention also had an RAC Rally provenance, being the VdP short chassis tourer chassis 14328 registered ELK 366, which had been entered by one R.A. Robertson in the 1938 event, finishing 19th of 38 in its Class.”

The second Jack Barclay photo looks like a Charlesworth drophead and shows registration number KV 9281 but we have no record of it.

The photographer was A E Nelson of 12A George Street, Hanover Square W.1

Chris Heyer also sent in some photos from the Freddy Lincoln Collection:

Christo first joined the AOC in 1973 and was a member of the AOC Netherlands. He followed his first TD21 drophead with several Park Ward 3 litres, TD, TE and TF and succumbed to the allure of a Graber coupe and the 4.3 model, once owning EDU 600, the well known short chassis Vanden Plas tourer and finally a 4.3 drophead which he brought to IAW in 2017. He was a frequent visitor to IAW in the UK and took part in various Tours including the memorable 1995 Tour of Switzerland when like a few others got caught at the top of the Furka Pass in a blizzard in his TF facing an icy descent.

It was with great sadness we received the news of Christo’s passing last Thursday 10th June at the age of 80.

The ceremony of cremation is on Friday, June 18 at 3 pm (2pm UK time), crematorium Ockenburgh and is on livestream:

play.quickchannel.com/play/wergbtt(opens in a new tab)

 passcode 123456

As the Drivers Club at Bowcliffe Hall is once again providing a full menu we can offer visitors to the archives the full experience we had become used to. If you would like to make a visit, under prevailing Covid rules, we shall be open to visitors next Wednesday, 16th June.

Visits are on an appointment basis and if you would like to come please leave a reply below with your preferred time of arrival.

The arrival of summer weather in the UK encourages open Alvis use and remembering how to put the top down and the tonneau in place.

The month of May was busy with identifying a large collection of Alvis photos received from a car and photography enthusiast in Holland. Some of them however remain a mystery as there were insufficient clues to to be sure of the chassis number – here are some of them – if you can identify the cars please let us know.