After 74 years, Alvis is back. And we've driven its old-new car - Top Gear
In purely rational terms, this is not the best car we’ll test this year. With all the fuss about Land Rover axing the Defender , and Jag’s decision to build another six Lightweight E-types , it’s been barely noticed that Alvis Cars, maker of grand prix and Le Mans cars in the Twenties and Thirties and of the Duke of... Before the Luftwaffe flattened Alvis’s Coventry factory in 1940, the 4. 3 made there was one of the fastest cars on sale anywhere in the world. At £995, it was twice the price of a semi-detached house in Kenton, and it was hardly any cheaper than a Bugatti Type 57. After the war, Alvis produced handsome two-door four-seaters that competed with the Aston Martins and Bentleys of their day... In the meantime, chaps in brown overall coats with chewed pencils behind their ears kept the old cars going, with spares, servicing and, increasingly, restoration. Fast-forward to 2012, and the values of classic cars are going through the roof. A Bugatti Type 57 has sold for £24m, an Alvis 4. 3 is worth £500,000 and TopGear is rhapsodising about the Eagle E-Type. Source: www.topgear.com
