This year’s main event for the Alvis Owner Club is the weekend of June 10/11 based in Crieff, Scotland. It celebrates the centenary of the 12/50 model and seventy years of the Three Litre TC21. Expected to be on display is the 1923 “Racing Car number 1”.
Car 7577 chassis 2091 Racing Car for Major Harvey on a Coventry street in the 1920s
Thirty years ago the Register celebrated seventy years of the 12/50. Then AOC Chairman John Wheeley wrote: “On behalf of the AOC I must congratulate The 12/50 Register for their 70th Birthday celebrations of the 12/50. To commemorate this occasion they amassed 158 Register cars at the VSCC Prescott Hill Climb in early August. Considering that the whole of thc AOC could not match this figure, even at International Alvis Day it is is a truly amazing achievement and all credit to the Register, its members and cars. We must do better – I shall get the big stick out next year!” The 1993 International almost matched those numbers and the 1994 75th Celebrations exceeded them.
The 1993 Alvis Owner Club International Weekend featured the cars of Graber, forty years after he was appointed the Alvis agent in Switzerland. The recent donation of the Lesley Thomas photo collection included several of that event now reported in a new album 1993 International Weekend. For reasons unknown we do not have a Club album of this event in the archives, so if you have any photos or slides, we would be pleased to receive them.
We were saddened to learn of the passing of Graham Keighley who was both a long standing Three Litre owner and friend of the Archive Trust who compiled the AOC’s car build sheets into lever arch files some years ago.
Graham Keighley – 1938-2023 – always immaculate with his TE21 drophead at Gstaad in 2005
The sole surviving Alvis Grand Prix racing car is set to mark its first public appearance in Chiba City, Japan at Automobile Council 2023, 96 years after its race debut at the 1927 Junior Car Club 200 Mile Race at Brooklands. The press release is here. See also The Second Coming .
Tony Cox and his son Matthew at International Alvis Weekend with the 1926 Alvis Grand Prix car on the Red Triangle display. 31st August 2014.
A TD21 Series II drophead, not heard of since it was new, has emerged as one of over 200 cars up for auction in Holland – see 5085 KV – it is 26844, 5085 VC at 1:21 in the right corner of the screen.
The Alvis Archive performs the function of automotive archaeologists (automobile, aeronautical and armoured vehicles) and as far as Alvis products are concerned. We use information gathered over a hundred years from factory and public records supplemented by histories provided by owners. The flow of information is continuous. We welcome donations of period photos, offer a service to digitise your photo collection, including slides and negatives, and will offer to purchase photo collections.
Recent photos submitted of cars have filled some gaps in the records.
Speed 25 Charlesworth Dhc
A contact on the 4.3 website sent in this photo.
“Please find attached a photo of the car and the registration number appears to be DTU 11. The owner of the car was a man called Charles Horton. If you can confirm the likely age of the car I can probably locate his address at that time.
Kind regards
Deborah
Wayne responded:
I had to tell her DTU 11 is not a 4.3. It is a Speed 25 Charlesworth Drophead. I show only four Speed 25 dropheads without registrations 13676, 13684, 13691 and 14554. DTU was issued by Cheshire circa March to June 1937.
13676 was despatched to Watson’s of Liverpool on 31 March 1937.
I asked Dave’s opinion. He responded:
“Another gap filled, Wayne. I have no doubt whatsoever that this car is 13676. It went to the Liverpool agent, Watsons, 31st March 1937, who sold it to a Harry Roy Yorke, who resided at Oakfield House, Stapeley, Nantwich, Cheshire. Nice photo too ! Strange however that this car did not surface during my search of the Cheshire County Records. However some of these omit the make, but there will certainly be a ledger entry for the mark at C.R.O. ( Chester )”
Chris Taylor also identified this car.
“This research was carried out as a response to an appeal on social media by DJC, Mick Fletcher and myself have been busy identifying this car.
We are now completely satisfied it is an SB Speed 20 sold through Folletts, coachwork by Vanden Plas as shown on Page 179 in Smiths book. They must be one and the same car as there was only one pillarless saloon built by VDP on the SB chassis. The registration is definitely AYM 885 (DJC confirms this fits exactly datewise) and the chassis number is 11229.
By sheer coincidence it turns out that it is the very car Ian Fletcher is restoring with matching engine and gearbox numbers but lost coachwork. I supplied the chassis frame formerly Martin Sismey’s ‘spare’ for his car AYN17.
Ian Fletcher has been given an age related number for the car but I don’t know what that is. But at least we now know the original identity of the car.”
The survival of this late TD21 Series I was only confirmed by the current owner requesting help in obtaining a V5C. It is probably for sale.
We received this photo of a Speed 20 seen by a customer of the 21 Gun Salute restaurant in India. A notice states it is one of six surviving Charlesworth Dropheads.
Based on his Car Records Wayne Brooks says “Charlesworth apparently built ten Drophead Coupés on the Speed 20 SD chassis. All despatched in 1936. Eight are believed, by me, to have survived. I’m reasonably sure of the present location of five of those.” So which one is it? For more on this model click Speed 20 SC / SD
We know that only nine Alvis were recorded as exported new to India but others have been imported after first registration. The new cars included two Speed 20 SBs, a 3.5 litre, two 4.3s, three Fourteens and one TD21 drophead which went to royalty.
Meanwhile on Florida’s Amelia Island, Scott and Natalie’s Bluestein’s TB14 secured a Class Award in the Concours.
The car is also at the Savoy Museum as part of the British invasion car exhibit. Wayne has been tracking all cars coming and going from the States for a very long time.
In Australia Chester McKaige is researching all the Alvis sold new and imported to Australia with the intention of publishing a book on the subject. Our downlodable model registers are being put to good work. In case you have not discovered them, they can be found at the bottom of each model page, all of which are listed in the QUICK INDEX
In New Zealand, one car that we have little information on before it left UK in 1965 is TD21 chassis 26169, supplied by Brooklands of Bond Street. No UK registration or owner has been found, so it is added to the “Known Unknowns” list.
I was prompted to write the attached article by a recent email exchange with John Fox about using Archive photos of the Duke of Edinburgh’s TD21 in a presentation I’m working on for the British Motor Museum at which I volunteer as a Museum Guide. As you will see I’ve spent a number of years with Alvis and although that’s a long time ago I’ve never lost interest in these fine cars.
So in the interest of adding to the Archive’s expressed aim of amassing as much information about Alvis cars as possible, I wrote this piece about the cars I’ve owned. I hope you feel that it’s the kind of thing your subscribers would appreciate and if it does produce any feedback or recollections from others, that would, for me, be a very interesting bonus.
Finally, you may already know this but the British Motor Museum has a 1965 TE 21, a Supercharged 1928 Front Wheel Drive which is nearing the end of a chassis up restoration, the 1967 Rover/Alvis P6BS prototype and the prototype Rover/Alvis Saloon designed by David Bache and nicknamed ‘Gladys’.
A trio of Alvis – by Cameron Slater
Sometime in 1974, I went to a slightly iffy used car dealer in Glasgow to look at a Rover P5B Coupe. And there in the front of the forecourt was this sad-looking TD21 with one front wing showing signs of a poor DIY repair job, one spotlight missing, two-tone paint with faded metallic silver roof over a tired maroon colour. The upholstery was sound, the woodwork faded, the varnish peeling, the headlining unmarked, the chrome was OK and the tyres were almost new Good Year radials.
I had always fancied the TD21 Alvis but for me, it needed knock-on wire wheels. The rather worn example I was looking at did have wire wheels – so I bought it. I knocked the dealer down from a totally unrealistic £325 to an acceptable £250 and drove it away. I never did see the Rover P5B Coupe I had gone there to look at in the first place.
Over the next few months I dealt with the more urgent mechanical issues and got the car running reasonably well.
The car’s registration was JSN 210 and the chassis number, 25954. By delving into the Alvis Archive, I find that the car is listed in the current TD Register as having been dispatched on 8 December 1958 so I imagine it wasn’t bought and registered until early 1959. According to the TD Register, it’s actually number 9 in the production series of the Park Ward cars. I passed on all the documentation I had when I sold the car but my recollection is that its first owner was the managing director of, I think, an engineering or a foundry company in Alexandria – hence the SN (Dumbartonshire) registration.
There were some detail differences between this and later cars. The rear wings behind the wheel arches were straight panels while later cars were slightly curved under, the air cleaner box was a slim rectangle instead of the thicker and rounded version on later cars. Transmission was via the BMC four speed gearbox from the Austin Healey BN4. It had an umbrella handbrake and drum brakes all round and, unusually, the speedometer and the rev counter needles swept in different directions.
So I was now the owner of an Alvis TD21. I joined the Alvis Owner Club and subsequently became the Chairman of the Scottish Section for a couple of years. I took the car to various shows around the central belt of Scotland and was a regular entrant at the annual Mellerstain House classic car event. But the bodywork was always a let-down so something had to be done about it.
I took the paint off the front wing only to discover that the top of the wing and the headlight mounting were mostly filler. This was a bit of a blow since my welding and panel beating skills were non-existent but I was a dab hand with the Isopon 38, so I simply made the filler conform more accurately to the original wing shape.
I then hired a spraygun and compressor and a few litres of Jaguar Midnight Blue cellulose paint. Despite my lack of experience, it all turned out rather well. True, there was more orange peel finish than I would have liked, especially on the offside, but if you looked at the car’s near side from about ten yards, it really looked quite presentable.
I drove the TD21 for a few years until I could afford to get it properly sorted. My daily transport at this time was a Ford Capri 2.0 so I set off from Glasgow and headed for Kenilworth and Red Triangle who, of course, were able to supply me with everything I needed. I drove home with a new front wing, two rear wheel arches and two (steel) door skins squeezed into the back of the Capri.
I knew that Mercury Motors of Lundin Links in Fife had a good reputation for restoring all kinds of classic cars, so I engaged them to rebuild and repaint the Alvis.
The results were a transformation. My TD21 emerged from a couple of months of renovation looking like new. The dreadful front wing and all the rusted panels had been replaced, the doors had been reskinned and rehung, and the whole thing had been resprayed in Jaguar Carmine Red.
I should, of course, have had it painted in its original Alvis colour of Alice Blue, but I thought red suited the car extremely well.
In about 1987, I was totally seduced by an AC Greyhound and sold the Alvis for about five grand. My recollection is that it was bought by an enthusiast in Wick in the far north-east of Scotland.
I heard nothing more about JSN 210 until one day in late 2014, I was browsing through the classic cars on Ebay and was astonished to see ‘my’ Alvis offered for sale. It had clearly been in good hands since my ownership and had been restored to its original Alice Blue colour. The car looked wonderful and so did the asking price. If I had held on to it for all those years my original £250 would have multiplied by a factor of about one hundred and forty. Sadly, in recent correspondence with John Fox, I learned that the car had been fire damaged although whether terminally or not John did not say.
My second Alvis was a 1964 TE 21, registration number CBA 239B, chassis number 27140, with wire wheels and the ZF 5-speed gearbox. I bought the car from an acquaintance sometime in, I think, 1975. It had some damage to the offside rear wing and had been languishing on a driveway in Glasgow’s west end for some time so the dark blue paintwork was faded. He wanted fifty quid for it. I bought it. I was completely and utterly off my head.
(The TD in the photo below is my TD21)
First, I had nowhere to put it so it sat in the road outside my flat. Second, the damaged bodywork needed repaired and third, it wouldn’t start. It needed a new battery, new plugs, points and all the electrical leads changed. Then, I discovered that the offside chassis rail was rusted through in a couple of places.
So this was a disaster. Why I thought I needed a second Alvis I will never know. But I now had one TD 21 which looked passable and ran rather well and a TE 21 which wouldn’t start, needed chassis and bodywork repairs and looked terrible. It had to go. At some point in, I think, early 1976, some deluded soul gave me fifty quid and trailered it away and I never saw or heard of it from that day to this.
But that’s not quite true. I recently discovered the Alvis Archive site and found CBA 239B listed in the TE21 register. Further research in the 1983 Members List showed that the car was owned by Kenneth Boyle in Glasgow who also owned a TD21 (26395 Reg.4626 DG). However, the 1980 Membership List showed Mr Boyle to be the owner of the TD21 only. Two explanations seem possible; either Mr Boyle bought the car from me in 1976 but didn’t register it with the Owners Club until 1983 or someone else bought the car from me and Mr Boyle bought it from my mystery buyer in 1983. So, does CBA 239B still exist? If so, I’d be fascinated to learn of its history.
(Thanks to Wayne Brooks who recorded the following: AOC Calendar March 2007: 1961 TD21 Saloon, Chassis No. 26395. Rolling chassis piled with bits. Body removed (except scuttle) but most parts above the waist survive. Car taken off road and stored since 1976 because of body rust. Also spare TD engine (No. 26277) plus ZF box and many parts from 1964 TE21 Saloon, Chassis No. 27140, also stored since 70’s. Offers for the lot to K. Boyle.)
My third Alvis was a 1938 12/70 saloon. I bought it from its owner in West Kilbride, Ayrshire for £100.
It needed a lot of work, but, given my lack of body restoration expertise, why I thought this would be a suitable project now seems completely inexplicable. Having tinkered with it in spare moments for some months, I sold it to a colleague for £100. He got the car running, hacked the roof off, restored the bodywork and turned it into a quite presentable convertible tourer. Sadly I have no record of this car any more – not even the registration number – but if any readers can add to my recollections of this or the other two cars, it would be good to hear from them.
Several new and old photos have been added to three pages (just click on the links) including several pre-1961 pictures from Clive Hutchinson’s collection
Based in W Sussex. Vendor would ideally like to sell as a job lot! Offers to be considered? Still available…..
SVS424 Chassis 20965 Black – on the left in the photo
KSV601 Chassis 23055 Green & Cream – in the middle on the photo
GMJ492 Chassis 23031 White – on the right in the photo.
Three TA14s – one Carbodies drophead and two saloons. All have been in dry storage for 10-15 years now. The coupe and one saloon ran before going into storage and both of these have had restoration started, so not all parts are on the vehicles, but are present. The other saloon has had some parts taken off in preparation for restoration. There are many spares with the vehicle’s: – engine; gearboxes; axle and more. There is a literal “barn full” which includes three complete cars (including interiors / glass) plus additional spares.
Logbooks for all three.
They all require restoration: –
1 x Alvis TA14 drophead coupe by Carbodies (this was running before going in to dry storage)
2 x Alvis TA14 Saloon models (one of these was running before going in to dry storage)
One (and a half!) spare engines; Three, (possibly four or five!) spare gearboxes
Front axle (maybe more). Numerous parts, bits and pieces.
Alvis Archive 