History
Alvis became part of Rover in 1965, which ended the company's car manufacturing in 1967 to allow it to concentrate on the manufacture of armoured vehicles. In 1968 Rover and its Alvis subsidiary were incorporated into the Leyland Motor Corporation later British Leyland or BL. In 1981 the then nationalised BL sold the Alvis business to United Scientific Holdings for £27 million. United Scientific was a manufacturer of military sighting products.
In 1992 United Scientific adopted the name Alvis plc.
In October 1997 Alvis acquired Hägglunds which was later renamed Alvis Hagglunds AB. In September 1998 Alvis acquired the armoured vehicle business of GKN in a deal which saw GKN take a 29.9% stake in Alvis. GKN's shareholding was purchased by BAE Systems in September 2003 for £73 million.
In early 2000 Alvis sold a share of its Avimo Group optronics subsidiary to Thomson-CSF and sold all of its remaining shareholding to Thales Group (the renamed Thomson-CSF) in 2001.
In 2002 Alvis acquired Vickers Defence Systems from Rolls-Royce for £16 million and merge it with its existing UK business to form Alvis Vickers. The acquisition of Vickers brought the Challenger tank into Alvis' portfolio, as well as Vickers' successful military bridging division and its South African subsidiary Vickers OMC.
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“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)