The grand surroundings of the Royal Automobile Club hosted a modest Champagne reception for Alvis cars last week.
That seems a fitting combination, because both seem right to describe the Coventry car maker.
Alvis has been sleeping for a large part of those 100 years, having been wound down and slipped into hibernation not long after the Second World War, but it has been roused recently to produce a series of continuation models.
The Lancefield Concealed Hood continuation model
Yet the new cars are more than that, they are old-world cars for the modern age, using traditional methods wherever possible.
They contain original parts and engine blocks from the stores of Red Triangle, which has looked after them so safely for so long – just as the firm has cared for Alvis.
But these cars are updated for today and fully road registered, with fuel injection and tight emission controls.
It’s a story that perhaps deserves more attention in Alvis’ centenary year than it has so far been afforded. But that’s in keeping with the tradition of the marque, I suppose.
Nowhere is quite as modern or living in the future as Japan, and it’s there that the ‘new’ Alvis cars have made a relative splash.
