Alvis in the family again
1923 Alvis 12/40
Owned by Nigel Boothman Time owned Just bought it Miles this month 20 Costs this month Purchase! Previously Got the Scimitar back on the road, and twiddled thumbs over the Armstrong-siddeley
So it turns out I do not have the time to restore a car. At least not when also repairing another classic (first a Volvo Amazon, then a Scimitar) and nursing an edgy fleet of semi-moderns through their Mots. In the nine years since I bought my 1934 Armstrong-siddeley project, my progress has been pathetic. I’ve still never driven it and, until the kids leave home 10 years hence, I probably never will.
The thing is, Mrs Boothman also prefers pre-war cars. Each spring she asks whether this might be the year that we take the Armstrong to the VSCC meeting at Prescott. And I always produce a sheepish shrug and it goes nowhere. So it was a kick from Mrs B – essentially ‘find a nice Alvis and I’ll go halves with you’ – that set me looking.
Alvis? My father bought a 12/50 in the 1990s and we drove it all over the place for the next 15 years, enjoying its cheerful, capable nature. So with that decision made, I did things in the wrong order. I should have joined the Alvis Register immediately but before I’d even sent off the paperwork I’d made an offer on a 12/40 – the sidevalve model that became the overhead-valve 12/50 in 1923. This was a June ’23 car, but it had an early 12/50 overhead valve cylinder block and head on its original 12/40 crankcase. More importantly (to us anyway) it had its original, narrow, four-seat touring bodywork by the Midland Motor Company, and it looked smart and roadworthy. But it was in Wiltshire and we were in Edinburgh.
My father, much further south, dashed off to test-drive it. The report was only moderately encouraging: noisy gearbox, brakes badly adjusted, starts and runs well, looks nice. The car was being offered by Cameron Brownlee of Origins Classics near Avebury. Through the old car network we discovered friends in common, so I was happy to do the deal over the phone. The car was picked up by Don Bowell, who moves classic cars in the friendliest and most reliable manner, and unloaded on Boothman Sr’s driveway in Cheltenham.
I met it soon afterwards, and I was surprised at how dainty it looks compared with the big 3.1-litre Armstrong. The road assessment was accurate but an unpleasant vibration develops above 40mph, so that needs investigating. And the seat squab is too high, so the windscreen rail is in my eyeline. And it runs a tad rich, and the clutch stop isn’t set up right. But it’s nice to work on something with BSF spanners again; and above all, it goes. You climb in, turn the fuel on, turn the ignition on, hit the starter and you’re off.
I thought I knew how to drive crash-box cars with a right-hand change and a central accelerator but that isn’t the conclusion you’d have come to if you’d heard me grinding my way to the Green Dragon in Cowley for lunch. Happily, I was better at it by the time I saw an invite from the Alvis Register’s Peter Radford to join a fabulous line-up of Register cars at VSCC Prescott to celebrate 100 years of the marque.
Yes – at long last, we really did get to Prescott in our own pre-war car.