1923 Alvis 12/50 from UK and Ireland - Comments

Valves blew at 90,000 miles, starter motor died at 92,000. Clutch replaced at 98,000.

Glorious old lady. Leather upholstery, wooden dashboard. Love the handling and acceleration, and general power is amazing for such a vintage car. Turns more heads than a Lotus!

Alvis? Was he one of the Chipmunks?

No, Alvis was the guy who sang "Jail house rock"!

You two should be ashamed of yourselves for making such disrespectful comments.

The owner obviously cares for his lovely classic car.

But his earlier car was a Morris Minor!

Hahaha.

Morris? Wasn't he the cat in the 9 Lives commercials?

Alvis, the great British automobile manufacturer, was like a Rolls-Royce. The difference was their funds, not their quality. Alvis cars were fine luxury cars in their day, practically a world (or at least several classes) removed from Morris Minors, the British Model T.

Quite right that last entry. The quality of the Alvis was that good; it was the British car of choice if you couldn't afford or didn't want a Bentley. Alvis continued to be made until the late '60s. The last model produced was the Graber-bodied saloon or convertible (I think it was the TD21 but I'm not sure about that) 3 litre, six cylinder, triple carburetters and with a 5-speed gearbox. They were so good, the Duke of Edinburgh had one of the earliest. I certainly saw him still with it in the 70s - maybe he's still got it! The company got shafted by Rover when they bought out Alvis cars (they might still make heavy military vehicles) and instead of dropping in the 3.5 litre V8 and making Alvis more competitive with Aston-Martin, etc, they ceased production of what was a very good car indeed. Another British Leyland mismanagement issue!

I think that we should all be glad that BL didn't attempt to make them into one of their luxury divisions. It would have wound up with an Austin Princess clone body and a reputation just like all other BL cars, even if it didn't have the problems that would have inevitably come from BL's close proximity.