DOWN THE WORKSHOP
1959 ALEXIS HFI TRIALS CAR Current owner: Stuart Roach
Roach restored it “Duncan Rabagliati found the car and rescued it from a farm many years ago. I later acquired it from Duncan and restored it over a very long period. When you do it for a living, your personal projects take a bit longer. It had been almost finished for a long time and its first event was a year ago. I decided to enter an event as it would force us to finish it.”
Alexis was a wellknown marque “The Alexis trials cars were numbered with Roman numerals and the race cars normal numbers. HF came from Bill Harris and Alex Francis, who founded Alexis. They were best known for building single-seater racing cars, including Formula Juniors and Formula Fords.”
It had been abandoned “It was in a field near Solihull where it had been left and Duncan went along and rescued it. He’d got in touch with Alex Francis to try and track down the cars. In total, there were about 20 trials cars. Alex had left this car in a shed but the shed had deteriorated and some boys had got at it and played football with it using a JCB, so it did look a bit sad. We’ve just restored it from a complete mess. We completely stripped it and salvaged the chassis and it is very much as it was in period.”
It is the prototype “This was the original prototype Alexis trials car and is the only HFI. It probably just pre-dates the first Alexis Formula Junior race car. The 1172cc Ford side-valve engine is almost as we found it. Someone had poured a load of concrete over the top of the engine but that sort of encased it and it was in pretty good condition inside. With a clean and a new set of rings, off it went.”
Rabagliati tried it out “Duncan rescued seven of them and over half still survive. Two more of them are in my shed, awaiting rebuild. Duncan drove one of the restored cars for hundreds and hundreds of road miles, and he races a front-engined Formula Junior Alexis, but he’d never done a trial until he passengered for me on the Plum Pudding Historic Trial over Christmas.”