1950s
Smith-Clarke retired in 1950, and Dunn took over as chief engineer. Before retiring, Smith-Clarke came up with the Alvis 3L3, TA21 prototype in 1947, TA14 body with a six-cylinder 3-litre engine, after retiring he used the prototype Alvis 3L3 as his personal car. In 1950, a new chassis based on the TA14 and six-cylinder 3-litre engine was announced, and this highly successful engine became the basis of all Alvis models until production ceased in 1967.
Saloon bodies for the TA 21, as the new model was called, again came from Mulliners of Birmingham, as they had for the TA 14, with Tickford producing the dropheads. With Mulliners committing themselves in October 1954 to supply only Standard Triumph, which purchased Mulliners in 1958,[5] and Tickford being acquired by David Brown, owner of Aston Martin Lagonda in late 1955, it was becoming clear that new arrangements would have to be made. Some of the most original and beautiful designs on the Three Litre chassis were being produced by master coachbuilder Carrosserie Hermann Graber of Switzerland. These often one-off–designed cars are highly sought after today.
Graber had begun to use TA 14 chassis soon after the war, building three Tropic coupés which were much admired. When the Three Litre chassis was introduced, his bodies displayed at the Geneva Motor Shows in 1951 and 1952 attracted sufficient interest for Graber to set up a standing order of 30 chassis per year. Swiss-built Graber coupés were displayed on the Alvis stand at both Paris and London Motor Shows in October 1955.
With a licence in place, from late 1955 all Alvis bodies became based on Graber designs, but few chassis and few bodies were built over the next two years. Around 15 or 16 TC108/Gs were built by Willowbrook Limited of Loughborough and Willowbrook was subsequently taken over by Duple Coachbuilders. Over the same two years Graber built 22 TC 108Gs and complained that if he had received chassis he would have committed himself to buying 20 a year.
Only after late 1958 with the launch of the TD 21 did something resembling full-scale production resume as Rolls-Royce subsidiary Park Ward began to build the new bodies now modified in many small ways. These cars, the TD 21 and its later variants, the TE 21 and finally the TF 21 are well built, attractive and fast cars. However it was clear by the mid-1960s that with a price tag of nearly double that of the mass-produced Jaguar, the end could not be far off.
From 1952 to 1955 Alec Issigonis, the creator of the later Mini, worked for Alvis and designed a new model with a V8 engine which proved too expensive to produce.
