Feature | A Day at The Alvis Car Company
I was recently fortunate to be invited on a tour of The Alvis Car Company facilities in Warwickshire, a company that has been given a new lease of life, thanks to the efforts of Alan Stote and his team of staff, for whom Alvis is more than just a job. It’s a passion, and Alvis is ‘still making cars how they used to be made.’ Before I get to the details of our visit, let’s have a look through the history of Alvis and how it came to be the company it is today.
The company was founded in 1919 by T G John and began manufacturing Alvis cars in Coventry with coachwork supplied by Cross & Ellis. Originally, the production of small, light cars was the focus, and the process of getting a car made was relatively simple. Once you had chosen the chassis, you’d choose the engineer to build the car. If you were able to pay for it, very few requests were deemed to be unachievable. Alvis is a brand with a racing pedigree as well, and in 1925, it was the world’s first car manufacturer to design and race a front-wheel drive car, a year later managing 121mph around Brooklands. In 1928, Alvis front-wheel-drive cars finished 1st and 2nd in class at the Le Mans 24-Hour race and 6th and 9th overall, only being beaten by 4-litre cars.
In the 1930s, production moved towards lower cars, such as the 4.3 Litre Lancefield Concealed Hood. The decerning customer of the time wanted lower rakish cars, and Alvis was happy to oblige. However, during the Second World War, production moved towards helping the war effort, and The Alvis Company controlled 21 ‘shadow’ factories producing aero engines for the RAF before moving back to producing cars once the war had ended.
In 1967, production stopped on new cars, and a year later, the Alvis passenger division was relocated to Kenilworth along with 60,000 works drawings, technical data sheets and correspondence files. Parts continued to be manufactured and restored for existing Alvis owners worldwide.
For the following 30 years, the brand laid dormant before Alan Stote stepped in to buy the buildings on the site and all that was contained within them. Having always loved Alvis, he sold his Midlands-based business and bought the company and its trademark. His main motivation for doing so was to access decades' worth of archives, from correspondence with customers to original drawings that were used to guide engineers and staff during production. Alan later described Alvis as “the best documented car company”, and after seeing these archives in person, it's hard to disagree, but more on that later.
It was only in 2010 that Alan and his team at Alvis decided to recommence car production, and the brand began development of the 3-litre and 4.3-litre engines before announcing a new range of limited edition Continuation Series models in 2019.
Production has resumed on the 4.3 Litre model, 72 years after the last 4.3 Litre car was produced. This Alvis model was the fastest non-supercharged production car of its day, and the all-British “Continuation Series” will live up to that heritage with each car being hand crafted from the original works drawings. The cars are powered by the Alvis 4.3 Litre six-cylinder engine faithfully produced to the 1936 design, retaining all its period character and quality whilst utilising modern technology.
Alvis 4.3 Litre Bertelli Sports Coupe
Entering the showroom, it looked like Jay Gatsby’s garage and we were immediately transported back in time to an era when the car as a concept was still in its relative infancy. Every car on display was a customer car, and now, of course, Alvis is in the business of continuation models. Continuation is the key word here, and Alan stressed that rather than a revival, there has simply been “time between sales”. Whilst it is a showroom, the doors are opened by appointment only. To buy an Alvis costs a considerable sum - but for that sum, you are rewarded with a car that is a limited edition and is made just how it would be made nearly a century ago.
I asked Alan what a typical Alvis customer looks like - “Wealthy” was the truthful response, and “usually over 45 and gripped with nostalgia” was a more detailed outlook. For generations of people in the West Midlands, Alvis was often more than a car company. Like Austin, Wolseley, Humber, Hillman and other marques that no longer are in existence, family connections to the companies were often what drew people in, evoking feelings of nostalgia. Many of the workers at Alvis are over 50 years old, as these cars require engineering that goes beyond your standard modern car. Almost entirely handmade, the skills required to build the cars are easier to learn if you have a passion and affiliation towards the brand. Finding the next generation to pass those skills on to has been difficult. Yes, they can be taught the older methods, but finding young people passionate about such engineering requires a connection beyond aesthetics.
When a customer purchases a Continuation model, the wait time is usually around 18 months. Orders have come not just from the UK, but around the world, including a strong connection in Japan. Four-figure production has only taken place on three models in Alvis’ history, and production across the Continuation series is limited to 25 cars, so it certainly has that feeling of exclusivity - those who choose Alvis don’t make that choice on a whim. It is a considered choice and one that is born out of passion and love for the brand.
To begin the tour, we were taken around the showroom with a quick journey through time, looking at the history of Alvis in the form of the various cars and memorabilia on display. Three cars immediately caught my eye as we made our way around. In the centre of the showroom lay the 4.3 Litre Bertelli Sports Coupe, first exhibited at the 1935 Paris Motor Show. With its six-cylinder Alvis engine, luxury seating and woodwork interior, this would be a stylish way to travel. The later 1960s era 3 Litre Graber Super Coupe is very different to the older models with styling compatible to a Lancia or Aston Martin of the same era. Also in the showroom was the 4.3-litre Vanden Plas Tourer, which John Marcar later took out for a drive which had curiously fitted 2013 registration plates.
As well as the cars, there is a brilliantly detailed cabinet full of memorabilia documenting the history of Alvis. The cabinet included treasures from motorsport events that Alvis cars had competed in. Also on display was a gold pocket watch that had been given to a retiring staff member.
Upstairs in the office is where the archives are to be found. Ultimately, these archives were the main reason that Alan purchased the company, and the amount of history to be found was staggering. All records have been kept from every Alvis ever built. Everything from original drawings to correspondence with customers. A couple of famous examples of previous owners took pride of place in the archives, as correspondences between Alvis and the Duke of Edinburgh about not wanting power steering were there to see in a Buckingham Palace stamped letter. Douglas Barder, another car enthusiast, owned a few Alvis cars in his time and regularly brought them into the workshops to be serviced. Far from the days of email, these correspondence letters bring the cars to life, and the complete handwritten documents for each car could be alternatively defined as a birth certificate.
The drawings in the archives were tracings of the original drawings and were distributed around the factory in order to help all the staff build the cars, far from the modern methods of photocopying. They can even be used in the production of the continuation models, helping to source parts all around the world. Imperial metrics were even used on drawings, and methods such as this are so rigorously stuck to, even in the modern day.
In 1966, despite the closure of Alvis Cars, to preserve the necessity of spare parts and servicing for owners, a new company was formed. The aptly named Red Triangle LTD opened, and today, the very same building located a short walk down the road from the showroom is the birthplace of all new continuation models.
We made our way into the fabrication shop where period methods have remained, yet the future has been embraced in some respects. Car bodies are built here, starting with a rolling chassis. Wooden frameworks were on display, being used to shape aluminium. A pair of doors can take between five and six weeks to make from flat sheets of aluminium shaped by hand on an old English wheel. Modern technology has been embraced to a point, with 3D printing used at some points in the process for the shaping and moulding process.
The best room of the tour was next as we made our way to an old warehouse full of disused Alvis cars. I love watching barn find videos on YouTube where old, abandoned and unloved cars get restored to their former glory. This was a barn find on steroids. The team take what they can from these chassis to build a continuation car, almost, in the words of Alan leading our tour, “it’s like handpicking a lobster at a restaurant before you eat it.” The intimate history of almost all of the cars is unknown, and at Alvis, one of the projects the team are hoping to take on is to find some of the stories of these cars. Using the chassis number, they are hoping to utilise the extensive archives in order to find previous owners and piece together the stories of how the car came to be in this position. The smell in the room was palpable and took me back to helping my dad take his MG out of the garage after a long winter with the combination of old leather, oil and dust that has been left to settle after a long period of time being unused.
The next stop; was the trim, materials and body shop department. As seen in the metal shop, everything here is created in-house in order to have control and consistency of quality. In keeping with modern-day customer expectations, extra steps are being made to improve the Alvis experience, with optional luggage matching the interior of your car available to be added to the order of a continuation car. Downstairs in the Bodyshop, we witnessed the creation of paint colours that were once lead-based. Lead is now banned from use, and the consistency of modern-day water-based paint is completely different, taking extra time and effort to recreate. As well as the continuation models, Matt, who runs the Bodyshop, takes on anything from minor repairs to entire restorations.
When it comes to parts, Alvis is well-stocked, with its own warehouse containing many rows of racks that stretch between two floors, full of different parts used in the process. Even the trays and storage boxes containing the parts are Alvis-made, being brought from the original 1920s factory. Alvis can account for 35,000 individual parts, with 1,500 having been used so far in the continuation process. Parts can be sourced from the glory days of Alvis from 1920 to 1967, and many of these parts are used in cars created in 2023.
Nostalgia is a word that often came up throughout the tour. Alvis prides itself on the fact that it is building continuation cars, not revivals. Rather than rebranding the company, there is simply time between orders. Exclusive, yes, but for a car that conjures such strong feelings of nostalgia, I believe it is a price worth paying. And to own a car that has been created using older, tried and tested methods from the past shows true love and care. Modern cars with high production numbers simply go through the conveyer belt of automated machinery, getting churned out before even being in the thoughts of a potential customer. With every step of the journey, the continued correspondence between Alvis and the customer results in a finished product that is a truly unique motor car - just as it did in the 1920s.
As the old saying goes, ‘nostalgia is a thing of the past’, yet Alvis is continuing with the creation of its continuation models with its historic parts, build methods and techniques in the modern day to produce more than just a motorcar. The result is a car that evokes memories, traditions and feelings. We mustn’t ever let go of those feelings, for they are the reason why we began loving everything automotive in the first place.
Keep an eye on the Driven YouTube channel for a video tour around The Alvis Company, presented by John Marcar, and a test drive of one of Alvis’ continuation models coming soon...
Words: Mike Booth
Pictures: Alvis & Mike Booth