When the Editor asked me to pen an article about an Alvis, I thought he’d said ‘Elvis’, and momentarily wondered why the King was to be a feature of a Beaded Wheels article. I soon realised that he was talking about an Alvis, and that initially the featured car was to be an Alvis Silver Eagle.
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nfortunately some unforeseen mechanical issues prevented the necessary hook-up for the required interview and photography session from taking place (as they sometimes do), but VCCNZ Hon. Secretary/Treasurer, Michael Lavender’s Speed 25 was conscripted in at short notice. While I’ve been around classic and Vintage cars for longer than I care to remember, and have owned more than my fair share of 1920s and 1930s vehicles, I still had to go scrambling for the reference books (read VCC library) so that I would at least have a fair idea of what I would be writing about. The closest I’d ever been to an Alvis was back in the 1960s, going for a test ride in a brand new 1966 Alvis TF21 that was in the then MacMillan Rover car dealership in Greenlane, Auckland, where I was an agency teller for the Bank of New Zealand. Apart from a ride around the same time in an acquaintance’s Alvis Grey Lady, I was more familiar with Elvis than Alvis. For the uninitiated, Alvis are perhaps best remembered for their sports and touring models, most notably, the Speed
25, which was (according to the reference books) ‘one of the best Alvis creations’! Even today, Alvis (albeit after take-overs and name changes!) are still manufacturing the personnel carriers and tanks that come out of the United Kingdom, not to mention hovercraft and helicopter engines, so that would suggest that their technology is still ground breaking – particularly the tanks! (Ground breaking? Get it? No? Moving right along then…) The featured car has an interesting history and is testimony to those like Michael who can envisage the finished product from what is often a bucket of bolts, or in this case, the proverbial basket case. So it was that at the conclusion of the 1996 National Rally at Cutler Park, three UK members with Michael and his wife Sherryn were having the traditional post-rally natter, and it was mentioned that there were the remains of two Alvis back in the UK. Michael, who had driven their Grey Lady on the rally and was on the lookout for another project, learned that he could have the choice of either a saloon or a basket case. As he was hankering for an open car, he opted for the basket case,
which essentially was just a rolling chassis with a dis-assembled engine and gearbox. The good thing about such a project is that the owner has a wide choice of body options. Knowing his Alvis, Michael was aware of a Speed 20 in the UK purposebuilt at the time for Tim Birkin, so the decision was made to base his car on the Birkin example. An excellent choice, I might add. Starting from scratch, it befell Ted Loversidge to prepare the body plan drawings based on the Birkin example. Len Rickard built the beech frame. Brian Dowty built the body, skinned it in aluminium, and also applied the paint – British Racing Green, of course! Lex Westoby rebuilt the motor and was the one that took the project from basket case to running chassis. Interestingly, the original motor had no fewer than 108 valve springs, in clusters of nine per valve. (Jeepers!
The Birkin Alvis Beaded Wheels 15