1966 Alvis TF21

This car has been extensively restored, but over the course of at least two ownerships. It was bought most recently as an unfinished project by a firm in Cheshire. As found, the car had been bodily restored and painted and reputedly had the engine rebuilt. However, it came with no receipts for the work at all; indeed all printed history had vanished bar a V5C.

The new owners went through the car to list everything that still required work. This eventually produced some £8000 in recent bills for extensive work to the wiring, re-plating the chrome, new tyres and a great many sundry mechanical parts to get everything road-ready. Culminating with a rolling-road set-up for those triple carbs, the Alvis is said to need nothing other than a new owner willing to put miles on the clock.

It’s an automatic, with Alvis’s unusual adjustable change-point control. It’s marked ‘HOLD’ and it allows you to hang on to a lower gear for descending steep hills, or just ensure the ‘box waits longer before changing up under hard acceleration.

The bodily condition of Park Ward Alvises is all important because they’re complex and costly to put right. With an ash frame used to support parts of the body, wood rot and adjacent rust have seen off many examples. This one shows none of the signs that would make us worry – no droop to the rear end of the body, or spreading of the rear arches, or uneven panel gaps and dropping doors. The flanks are commendably smooth, level and consistent under a very good coat of paint. Not the original colour, we think, but undeniably handsome.

As a further reassurance, the gentleman tasked with finishing off the restoration visited Chris Prince (the go-to guy for used Alvis Three-Litre spares) after the car was acquired and Chris showed him the trouble spots on a far-gone example. Armed with this knowledge, he inspected what he could see of the TF’s structure with close attention and was delighted to find it all in sound condition.

The newly-plated chrome is spotless, as are the wire wheels and spinners. The car is shod with four new Avon radials that look just right. The lamp lenses and all window glass are undamaged and the bumpers even wear the correct Alvis-badged rubber plugs.

The car had been professionally retrimmed in leather before the vendor acquired it, and it still looks as though it’s never been sat on. The blue piping is not an original feature but it matches the outside colour. Likewise, the dash covering should be black vinyl rather than this blue alcantara-type finish, but it’s nice to the touch and fits in with the general scheme.

For the TF21, all the dials were gathered in front of the driver, making it easier to see what’s going on than it was in a TD or TE. This leaves the centre portion free for heating, demisting and ventilation controls, the neat little clock and the auto gearbox controls. The selector is a five-position slider: Park, Neutral, Drive, Low, Reverse, and below that is the aforementioned Hold adjustment. Just above them is a working Chrysler-badged AM/LW radio.

The blue carpets are all new and edged with leather binding. There are proper rubber footmats sewn in, and if you lift the carpets you’ll find a thick layer of insulation. The door cards, trimmed with the same piped leather and blue carpet, are unmarked. The boot is also trimmed in blue carpet and contains a jack, an instruction manual and a mallet for the wheel spinners. Under the carpet is a careful patchwork of modern sound-damping material. The spare wheel is located underneath the boot of the car.

A nice Three-Litre Alvis should cough politely into life at the first touch of the button, or in the case of a TF, the first tweak of the key - and this one does just that. It will idle smoothly right down at 500rpm or less, which turns the dynamo slowly enough to provoke the ignition light into illuminating. It picks up and revs with no hesitation and behaves just as you’d hope from a freshly set-up system.

On the road, it changes gear smoothly and at your choice of revs, thanks to the Hold function. It steers effortlessly due to the power assistance and stops better than most 1960s cars thanks to those four-wheel discs.

The impression of a carefully and expensively restored car continues if you lift the bonnet or peer underneath. The engine bay is clean and smart with new hoses and clips here and there, an electric radiator fan, a clear paper-element fuel filter where it can be seen and changed easily, and a thumping great Bosch battery. Stick your head under and you’ll see lots of black-painted chassis and suspension with no rust or even surface bloom. Grease on the nipples, fresh rubber bushings, a smart new exhaust, re-made aluminium wing liners…and so on. All very encouraging!

Everything done by the vendors, who finished off the restoration, is in the folder – but that’s about it. So let’s detail what they’ve done: mechanical service work with an invoice for £436 for all of the parts, a radiator at £165, an £845 invoice for a starter motor, thermostat, master cylinder repair kit and loads of other bits. Then there’s a separate £1,057 invoice for many more miscellaneous parts, and all of the above just in June 2020.

The next month they spent £900 on a stainless twin exhaust system, and in August, £1476 in August 2020 for attention to wiring work that included re-making many connections, re-wrapping wires in suitable material and so on. The chrome plating brought a bill of £2,259 in September. An antique furniture restorer repaired and repolished the steering wheel.

There are invoices from the names you want to see – Red Triangle and Chris Prince, amongst others – but of course none of it covers the major work earlier in the restoration.

A good Alvis Three-Litre is a true life-improver…think of it as a kind of motorised Jeeves. Would sir or madam like to proceed quietly in great comfort at their choice of speed? Then please be so good as to step aboard. A TF21 provokes no negative reaction of the type you can get from a scarlet Ferrari or an E-type, but you might have to explain what it is to admirers in the petrol station. That’s fine, though – it’s an understated, elegant car with nothing to prove.

Down to business. We think this car will fetch between £30,000 and £40,000. That’s a wide range because this is an unusual proposition. It’s a rare model – only 106 TF21s were built, including the dropheads – so you don’t see many for sale. It’s had what appears to be an excellent restoration yet any photos of the process or receipts detailing the work to the body, chassis and driveline have been lost, so it’s one you must buy on condition. With prices of good drophead TDs, TEs and TFs often exceeding £70,000, around half that for a really nice saloon is extremely tempting – especially when an unrestored runner will still cost you £20,000 and more…before the bills start coming in.

We’ll leave the final word to the famous comic writer Frank Muir, who owned a TF21 and who sold it via an advert quoted in Dave Culshaw’s excellent book on the Three Litre models.

‘…this vehicle has been used solely for conducting retired clergymen to evensong, and has been nightly sponged down with a light Hock.’

We can’t quite make that claim, but it’s a jolly nice car, isn’t it?

Viewing is always encouraged, and this particular car is located with us in Abingdon. To arrange an appointment please use the ‘Contact Seller’ button at the top of the listing. Feel free to ask any questions or make observations in the comments section below, or try our ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.