Photo: The Alvis Car Company Limited
Continuation series cars are a big thing nowadays. Jaguar, Bentley, and Shelby have been offering such vehicles for years now and they seem quite popular too, despite the expensive price tags. Alvis, a British company that stopped building road-going cars back in the 1960s, is the latest to jump on the continuation bandwagon.
Established in 1919, Alvis was one of Britain's most important builders back in the early days of the automobile. It rolled out almost 30 different nameplates in 50 years, ranging from sedans and coupes to cabriolets and two-door sports cars. Alvis disappeared in 1967 when it was incorporated, as part of Rover, into British Layland, but it just returned with a bang.
Plans to revive the brand go back to 2012, but it took the new company a bit longer than expected to return to the market. Following two years of development and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Alvis finally completed its first continuation series car. The nameplate of choice: the Graber Super Coupe.
The car draws its name from Carrosserie Hermann Graber, a Swiss coachbuilder that bodied several Alvis models in the 1950s and 1960s. A sleek, pontoon-style two-door coupe, the Graber features an all-aluminum body and new old stock chassis and engine blocks that were "carefully stored by Alvis since the Coventry factory closed in 1967."
The coupe draws juice from a modernized version of the company's historical 3.0-liter inline-six engine, now capable of 172 horsepower and 209 pound-feet (283 Nm) of torque. That's 42 horses more than the 1960s variant of the car. Alvis says that the coupe hits 60 mph (96 kph) from a standing start in 8.9 seconds.
The first Graber in more than 50 years is one of six coupes that Alvis is planning to put together. All of them will be shipped to customers in Japan via Meiji Sangyo, the company's distributor in the Asian country. Not quite surprising for a continuation series vehicle, the Graber Super Coupe costs a fortune, coming in at £323,000 before options. That's almost $450,000 at the current exchange rates, a hefty sum that will get you anything from Rolls-Royce and Bentley land yachts to supercars from Ferrari and Lamborghini.
Once all six coupes roll off the assembly line, Alvis is planning to offer a cabriolet version too. Also set to be exported to the Far East, it will probably cost even more than the hard-top. At the same time, Alvis is looking to kick off production of the Lancefield pre-war continuation series, set to retail from £295,000 (around $405,000).
Plans to revive the brand go back to 2012, but it took the new company a bit longer than expected to return to the market. Following two years of development and delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Alvis finally completed its first continuation series car. The nameplate of choice: the Graber Super Coupe.
The car draws its name from Carrosserie Hermann Graber, a Swiss coachbuilder that bodied several Alvis models in the 1950s and 1960s. A sleek, pontoon-style two-door coupe, the Graber features an all-aluminum body and new old stock chassis and engine blocks that were "carefully stored by Alvis since the Coventry factory closed in 1967."
The coupe draws juice from a modernized version of the company's historical 3.0-liter inline-six engine, now capable of 172 horsepower and 209 pound-feet (283 Nm) of torque. That's 42 horses more than the 1960s variant of the car. Alvis says that the coupe hits 60 mph (96 kph) from a standing start in 8.9 seconds.
The first Graber in more than 50 years is one of six coupes that Alvis is planning to put together. All of them will be shipped to customers in Japan via Meiji Sangyo, the company's distributor in the Asian country. Not quite surprising for a continuation series vehicle, the Graber Super Coupe costs a fortune, coming in at £323,000 before options. That's almost $450,000 at the current exchange rates, a hefty sum that will get you anything from Rolls-Royce and Bentley land yachts to supercars from Ferrari and Lamborghini.
Once all six coupes roll off the assembly line, Alvis is planning to offer a cabriolet version too. Also set to be exported to the Far East, it will probably cost even more than the hard-top. At the same time, Alvis is looking to kick off production of the Lancefield pre-war continuation series, set to retail from £295,000 (around $405,000).
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