Alvis TD 21
Alvis Car and Engineering Company Ltd
ProductionSeries I: 1958–1961 / 784 built / Series II: 1962–1963 / 285 built
EngineAlvis 3.0 L Straight-6
Alvis Car and Engineering Company Ltd
The Alvis Three Litre Series II, also known as TD21, was a British sports saloon or coupé made by Alvis Car between the end of 1958 and October 1963. It was a revised version of the TC 108G, the body was made by Park Ward who were better able to supply them to the quantity, quality, and price required. The cars were slightly taller and a drop-head coupé was added to the range. They were both lighter. The 2993 cc engine was again uprated, now producing 115 bhp (86 kW) mainly by an improved cylinder head and increasing the compression ratio from 8.0:1 to 8.5:1. A new four speed gearbox from the Austin-Healey appeared and Borg Warner three speed automatic transmission was offered.
Overdrive was available on the manual transmission from late 1960 to 1962. Suspension was similar to the TC 21, independent at the front using coil springs with leaf springs at the rear but the track was increased by 1 in (25 mm) to 55.5 in (1,410 mm) and a front anti roll bar added. Wire spoked wheels became an option. From 1959 the all drum brake set up was changed to discs at the front retaining drums at the rear. A car with manual transmission was tested by the British magazine The Motor in 1960 and had a top speed of 103 mph (166 km/h) and could accelerate from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) in 13.5 seconds. A fuel consumption of 20.2 miles per imperial gallon (14.0 L/100 km; 16.8 mpg‑US) was recorded. The test car cost £2827 including taxes.
From the Wikipedia article Alvis TD 21, CC BY-SA.
Among the 18 Alvis Car and Engineering Company Ltd entries in the MotorJury library, the Alvis TD 21 holds its own page in a catalogue built to record every car ever made, from series production to one-off concepts. The record places its introduction in 1958. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Alvis TD 21 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1950s were the optimistic post-war boom, when chrome, tailfins and new unibody construction met the first purpose-built motorways and sports-car racing shaped reputations. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Nissan Nissan Patrol, the Nissan Nissan Skyline, the Dodge Dodge Challenger — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Alvis TD 21 reads like this: the record lists its engine as Alvis 3.0 L Straight-6; kerb weight is recorded at 1475 kg; drive goes through 4 speed manual, automatic; the layout is FR layout. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Alvis Car and Engineering Company Ltd's own catalogue the Alvis TD 21 sits alongside the Alvis 10/30, the Alvis 12/50, the Alvis 12/70, the Alvis 12/75. The record names the Alvis TC 108G as its predecessor and the Three Litre series III as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Assembly is recorded at United Kingdom: Coventry, England.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.
A specification sheet is only half a car's story. The other half — what breaks, what it costs to keep, which years to avoid — lives in MotorJury's ownership database, computed nightly from federal complaint and recall records and EPA economy data. Where the Alvis TD 21 was sold in the United States, its model years carry full ownership verdicts there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.