24/11/2009 - W de Forte drives an Alvis TE21 and remembers his chum Douglas Bader

'MAKE WAY FOR THE QUALITY!'

Douglas Bader could be a disagreeable old cove, but only towards those who didn't meet his standards, or couldn't operate at his level of heightened urgency. This applied to sluggard motorists as well as dimwitted superiors in the RAF, and the legless ace piloted his Alvis motor cars rather as he flew his Hawker Hurricanes.

Travelling with Bader was a startling experience. With his left tin leg shoved well out of the way in the passenger footwell, he used a cupped hand to aid shifting his substitute right peg back and forth between throttle and binders. What he lacked in feel and subtlety of touch, he made up for with bravery, alertness and lightning reflexes. Pulling out into oncoming traffic to pass the potterers, he would simply floor the loud pedal and shout, “Make way for the quality!”

Nutty as the proverbial fruitcake though he may well have been, Bader's automotive battle cry was utterly apt. This is because, above all other considerations, the Alvis Engineering Company made gentlemen's motor cars of supreme quality.

A manufacturer of fine and imaginative automobiles since 1920, Alvis also made a name for itself designing and building military vehicles and aero engines. Car production ceased in 1967 but, despite several changes of ownership, the fighting vehicle division still exists to this day.

Pre war Alvis cars were fast, stylish and brilliantly innovative. The firm built a front wheel drive Grand Prix car in 1926 and two years later applied the technology to a road going model. Most of the firm's technical drawings from this period were lost in the Coventry blitz of 1940, along with much precision tooling and manufacturing equipment, but the FWD blueprints survived and my good pal Alec Issigonis spent many hours poring over them to good effect when he worked for Alvis in the early 1950s.

After the goons were defeated, Alvis settled down to building sensible and solid sporting saloons and a new chassis and six cylinder 3.0 litre engine were introduced in 1950. Alvis had its own foundries and precision engineering shop but the business was far from self sufficient. Its cars were always coachbuilt by bodywork specialists, but these concerns were in increasingly short supply after the war and finding reliable and economical body suppliers was a problem that would hamper the company for more than 20 years.

But it was not all doom and gloom. Swiss master coachbuilder Hermann Graber produced some quite exquisite designs on the new chassis and from the mid 1950s the best of these was licensed and used as the model for all future Alvis cars. After a few early cars were bodied somewhat expensively by Loughborough coachbuilder Willowbrook, a more businesslike deal was struck with Park Ward of London, a firm by then owned by Rolls Royce.

Between 1958 and 1967 Alvis worked with Park Ward to produce around 1500 of these handsome sporting saloons and coupes. They were craftsman-made motor cars which were well received by the public and motoring hacks alike, but ultimately the high retail prices necessitated by the cars' laborious and costly production process could no longer be sustained. The firm, which was taken over by Rover in 1965 and subsequently sucked into the British Leyland abyss, made its last motor car in 1967.

It is many years since I have driven an Alvis 3.0 litre so it was with great pleasure that I learned of the whereabouts of a fine Park Ward example. And I only had to mention to the owner I was working for 'The Chap' and a morning of do-as-you-like driving was soon arranged.

8213KR is one of just 95 TE21 drophead cars built, of which 88 are said to survive. First registered to a lady doctor in Kent in July 1964, KR was sold two years later to little known thespian Malcolm McDowell, who later achieved fame playing juvenile delinquents in the films 'If' and 'Clockwork Orange'. McDowell kept the Alvis for many years, taking it with him to Beverley Hills where the climate and lifestyle was perhaps rather kinder to the car than to its owner. The pale gold TE21 eventually returned to Blighty in the 1990s, whereupon it was reunited with its British registration plates and began to enjoy the pampered existence of a highly valued classic car.

The test took place on a fine autumn morning so KR's mohair ragtop was collapsed without fuss and the tonneau cover was quickly and easily fitted before I jumped into the well upholstered driver's seat. The immaculate six cylinder engine fired immediately on the key and while the semi automatic choke sucked away audibly for a minute or two until the owner deemed the old girl ready for take off, I had a chance to take in my surroundings.

Delightful contrasting timbers and smart clocks and controls made for a tasteful dashboard and the original cream leather seats and door cards were complemented by a smart new carpet. The wood rimmed steering wheel sported the glorious Alvis Eagle motif on the horn push and the car's factory fitted wireless with discrete speaker and other details were also pleasing to behold. All in all the car's interior exudes quality and is quite the perfect cockpit for a retired RAF pilot; I was reminded why Douglas Bader was so fond of his Alvises (he had four) and had slipped into something of a daydream when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was time to go!

Wiping an errant nostalgic tear from the de Forte phizzog, I clicked off the choke and nosed the Alvis clear of its sleepy village home and onto the King's Highway. On the road, the car's modern power assisted steering system is a delight. It is smoothly progressive in operation so low speed manoeuvring is almost effortless and at high velocities the device is utterly imperceptible. Quite brilliant and completely unlike the horrid floaty devices of the 1950s.

A two pedal model as preferred by my old chum Bader, KR features a Borg Warner automatic gearbox with a natty slide control device with which the driver can override the box's hydraulic brain to bring together or space out its shifting points. Some say a degree of torquiness was lost as Alvis developed and tuned the 3.0 litre lump over the years, but I found the lazy burbling power of this 130bhp version of the motor to be quite delicious. And once a lazy mood has passed, shifting the gearbox control lever to what may now be termed sport mode, and throwing on the coals brings about acceleration of no less urgency than a contemporary Jaguar saloon.

Although I decided not to reach the three figure speeds recorded daily by Bader, the car was comfortable cruising at 70mph on the motorway and wind noise, considering we were topless, was minimal. Tractable and docile in town, the Alvis featured disc brakes all round and the car crouched down to a dead stop without fuss. Proper motoring in every regard. All too soon my sortie was complete and it was time to return to base for photographs.

While snapping pics of this charming and pretty car, which is little different in appearance to the Graber originals from which it was developed, I asked its owner to reflect on its enduring appeal. “It's stylish yet unpretentious,” was his reply, “And it offers an opportunity to experience a piece of England that otherwise no longer exists.” Hear hear!

Incidentally, my last memory of riding in an Alvis with Bader may be worth repeating here. We were tooling through Buckinghamshire on the A40 on a wild and windy night, on our way to a POW reunion dinner at RAF Northolt, and had picked up a soggy beatnik hitch-hiker, who turned out to be in obvious need of a good bath, and whose incessant twittering was beginning to prove rather tiresome.

The scruffy erk then made the mistake of asking us where we were going. “To meet up with some people we were in prison with,” answered Bader in a flash. Some time passed before our whiffy back seat passenger spoke again. “Why were you in prison?” he asked finally. “For killing people,” came the reply. The erk soon decided he had already reached his destination.