How about displaying your car on the Alvis Owner Club Stand at the NEC, Birmingham in a few days time, starting on the 8th November. Just for once, this opportunity is limited to Saloon TA 14s as there will be Dropheads joining the stand. The car does not have to be concours or pristine and can even be a work in progress that arrives on a trailer as an example of a Saloon is all that is required. Plenty of exposure for the right car and if sale thoughts are on the horizon what a good opportunity. Contact email address at end of this Post should your car wish to be the star?

TB 14s are well known for the fact that many owners have installed a cocktail cabinet in the near side door along the lines of the Motor Show model.‘The Man Cave’ at The Broadway in The Cotswolds has another version that can be enjoyed by all classic car owners. A ‘jerry can’ converted into a cocktail cabinet was on sale for £145. When shut the only giveaway was the lock installed in the outside. Immediately after the photo was taken the can was snapped up by a keen customer and removed from the counter. Quite likely the shop can obtain more. What a novel idea for a Christmas present for the car that has everything.

Speaking of the upcoming festive season, have a browse through the section Brochures and Publications, see above header. Plenty of tempting reads. Anyone who has not yet purchased a copy of Dave Culshaw’s beautiful coffee table book ‘Alvis Society, A Century of Drivers’ will have the added bonus of a complete listing of every Alvis Car ever made throughout the book.

Plenty of other books of interest including ‘Young Ron’ and the Carbodies book by Bill Munro.

Also consider an original sales brochure, still available for reasonable prices and not just in English, eBay is a  good place to look.

To purchase books go to the Alvis Archive Trust, and also Red Triangle, redtriangle.co.uk. At Red Triangle there are other items including a 13 piece tool roll designed for classic cars.

Ebay now does not charge a selling fee to private vendors selling classic car parts. Some good items available at the moment are the 4 Nave Plates ‘Hub Caps’ in America for 124.99 dollars. They are rare items and if you lose one you need one. Other chrome parts for sale see above on ABAY.

For another idea for the festive season, how about a personal painting of your car(s). A visit to the Midland Hotel, Morecambe, Lancashire will enable a sight of this lovely Art Deco style painting of a TA 14. For once the correct number plate was used by the artist. The owner was alerted and he purchased the original with a copy remaining in the hotel. The Artist is Linda Page of Morecambe and expect she would undertake commissions. It is an excellent painting and quite different from the more usual style of car paintings. The Midland Hotel has, not surprisingly, featured in the Hercule Poirot series.

Sadly there is no longer the opportunity to have your car painted by Michel de Alvis, a fashionable Parisian painter who sadly passed away in 2019. His rather unusual style would have produced striking car portraits if this painting of a French barge is anything to go on.

In the event a commissioned artwork is not required there are excellent software packages that can turn a photo of your car into an impressionist painting or various styles, works very well.

The Fourteens for sale on carandclassic.com remain mostly about the same. The buyers market continues and a good time to buy as some very nice ones available. The  Raine Saloon remains available with an asking price of £18 000. How many good and unique TA 14 Saloons with one family ownership since new remain available? As they say, when it is gone it is gone.

The exception to the cars for sale remaining about the same is the fine Special for sale in France with an asking price of 60 000 euros. Originally a Mulliners Saloon, chassis 23412 went on to become a rather basic Special. What a transformation since then from an ugly duckling to a swan. The current body is most attractive and the car has appeared in a film. The French  certainly know how to do Concours D’elegance, perhaps why they gave it the name.

Recently a TB 14 has been searching for a TB 14 choke cable. Fortunately the problem is now solved to the extent a new one can be made now that the missing bits have turned up. Specific spares for TB 14s can be a particular problem for TB 14 owners as thankfully not many are broken up! There  must be many Fourteen owners who have had to have replacement parts made and it would be useful if details could be retained for possible future use by Fourteen owners. Records can be maintained by the Alvis Archive Trust, alvisarchive@btinternet.com is the email address.

There is a Suppliers and Services Section shown on the header above and all the businesses there have been recommended by Alvis owners. Happy to add/amend this list and also the Alvis Archive Trust can retain blueprints/details of the work done. Material can be sent through by contacting the email address at the end of this Post.

Another batch of TA 14 spares has been listed under ABAY above. The spares include head lamp shells and bumpers and so could be very useful additions as back up spares for your car. A further batch of TA 14 spares located in the Cambridge area will be listed soon on ABAY above and will include photos.

As winter fast approaches for us, the Southern hemisphere has the development of Spring and start of the new driving year for many. Alvis cars were exported after the Second World War with the intention of bringing in much needed export money. The majority of our cars went to the traditional main Commonwealth countries and in particular Australia and New Zealand. To encourage buyers and show off their new cars the Motor Shows were supported by Alvis and a selection of Fourteens took the long sea journey down under. Mulliners Saloons were the predominant early exports but they were up against other British cars, the Americans and in November 1948 the first Australian made Holden rolled into view. Styling wise slightly more modern in appearance!

This black-and-white photograph shows Australian prime minister Ben Chifley at the launch of the Holden FX, the first mass-produced Australian-made car, at the General Motors-Holden’s factory at Fisherman’s Bend in Melbourne, Victoria, in 1948. Chifley is shown standing next to the first FX Holden to come off the factory’s assembly line.

Closer to home, it is good news that Tilly, the Shooting Brake mentioned in the previous Post, now has a new owner and the intention is to restore Tilly to the fine Shooting Brake she has been , such good news, the 1940s/1950s Shooting Brakes are becoming quite iconic now.

As well as Shooting Brakes, a few Fourteens were pressed into Service to tow a caravan, a job they appeared to be quite good at for their families.

One conundrum that hopefully never materialised for a Fourteen owner was what to do if your caravan rolled over? Fortunately expert advice was available and a resourceful  owner would soon have the caravan back on its wheels albeit with possibly a little broken crockery to clear up.

The main Alvis Archive Trust site has now spun off a further 2 separate sites and these are well worth a visit. See alvisarchive.com and click on the Links heading. Then there is the 4.3 website and the Alvis vehicles showcasing much material about the Military vehicules produced by Alvis.

eileen4ta.tb14s@rocketmail.com