[NOBBC] The man that kept us driving all these years

[D Paige]

Moss: We Are Honored to Carry the Name


September 26, 2012

Al Moss, the founder and spirit of Moss Motors passed away Tuesday night,
September 25, 2012. Here in our building and in our catalogs, too, Al$B!G(Bs
presence is still palpable and will be, we hope, as long as we are in
business. We are better because of it.

Moss Motors didn$B!G(Bt start out to be a restoration parts business at all, and
if E. Alan Moss had bought a Ford instead of an MG TC things might have
turned out very differently indeed! Al was then a young man living in the
emerging Los Angeles powerhouse, and the lure of the TC, known as $B!H(BThe
Sports Car America Loved First,$B!I(B was irresistible. After reading about the
successful road rallies being held on the East Coast, Al decided to organize
one of the first West Coast rallies, this being the summer of 1948.

The rally, which ironically enough ended in Santa Barbara, brought Al into
contact with a bunch of fellow MG enthusiasts. However, apart from a passion
for British cars they all shared a common problem-parts for these cars were
just not available at the local service station and invariably had to be
specially ordered to keep these early post-war vehicles on the road. Al had
served an apprenticeship in front-end alignment and owned some garage
equipment. He saw an opportunity to combine his love for sports cars with
the chance to make a living, figuring that a shop working on front ends and
the occasional TC of a friend, might work out.

So he took the chance and rented a shop at 3200 Olympic Boulevard in Los
Angeles, where the very first Moss Motors sign was hung outside the door.
More than the sign was hanging out here, however. Al$B!G(Bs British car-owning
buddies started to hang out at the shop, and more than once the shop closed
its doors for an afternoon because his friends wanted to drive to somewhere
more $B!H(Binteresting!$B!I(B Under Al$B!G(Bs leadership this bunch became the $B!H(BForeign
Car Group$B!I(B-one of the first sports car clubs in California. An attorney
among them had suggested they used the word $B!F(BGroup$B!G(B instead of $B!F(BClub$B!G(B to
avoid potential insurance problems. Another collection of sports car
enthusiasts gathered at Al$B!G(Bs shop every Saturday calling themselves the
$B!H(BMoss Motors Luncheon & Bench Racing Society$B!I(B.

Moss Motors was, by now, doing a great deal more than just front end work
with Al buying and selling a few cars later in 1948. One TC Al sold for
$1100 was to a teenager named Howard Goldman. Two years later Howard bought
another TC from Al (which he still owns!). They became firm friends, and
this friendship was to have far reaching implications.

The logical expansion of this growing business was to begin selling new
cars, and in the spring of 1950 Al became the West Coast distributor for
Allard Cars bringing the first Cadillac powered Allards to the area. In
addition he also became the L.A distributor for the Rootes Group selling
Hillmans, Humbers and the Sunbeam-Talbot lines. The Allards were fast and
had a richly deserved reputation for being extremely difficult to drive. Al
raced one with some success, but a serious accident in January 1951
convinced him that his future might lay in other pursuits. He$B!G(Bd never
really enjoyed the new car sales end of the business and so he sold the
distributorships, in order to concentrate on the service and parts work he
loved the best. Al moved to a new facility on Pico Boulevard, however, he
soon outgrew this location and moved again, this time to Venice, just west
of Los Angeles proper.

Throughout the late 1950s, service work was the prime function of Moss
Motors, however, since the MG TC had gone out of production in 1949, being
superseded by the MG TD, parts availability was becoming a major problem. Al
began to buy up lots of obsolete parts and even ventured into manufacturing
some items. Thus with a supply of parts to support his own service needs,
and an ever-growing demand from people who wished to undertake their own
restoration and repair, Al prospered. Eventually, with more and more owners
calling for spare parts it seemed logical to produce a modest catalog, and
thus the first TC catalog appeared in 1962.

By now, Howard Goldman together with his brother Philip, had, in 1958,
relocated their family-owned company some 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles
to the scenic city of Santa Barbara. After numerous visits with his friend
Howard, Al decided to relocate Moss Motors to Goleta, a small town adjacent
to Santa Barbara in 1961. And, with the mail order side of the business
expanding rapidly, the decision was taken to drop the service side of the
operation.

Al was also going international at this time, making frequent trips to
England to purchase discontinued parts which his customers urgently
required. And Moss entered the computer age in 1970 with the purchase of an
early IBM card based system. Rumor has it, that this very machine can be
seen in some distant computer Hall of Fame! Also during the early 70$B!l(Bs, two
junior members of staff joining Al were, Glen Adams, the current President
of the company, and Chris Kepler, currently Vice President of Operations,
and both are still here forty years later!



Glen Adams, Al Moss and Chris Nowlan.

The business continued to grow as enthusiasts embraced the British sports
car movement and Moss expanded by adding parts and catalogs for the MGA, the
early MGB, The Austin-Healey and the Jaguar XK120-140-150 series. In 1977 Al
purchased 48 tons of $B!F(Bobsolete$B!G(B inventory directly from Standard Triumph
in England, a shipment which filled no less than four 40ft containers, and
was in fact, the largest single buyout of TR2-3-4 spares ever! Thus, in 1978
Moss Motors published the world$B!G(Bs first comprehensive TR2-3-4 catalog and
this publication also represented a new philosophy. The catalog illustrated,
and listed, virtually all the parts that would ever be needed for these
cars, even if the parts were no longer available at press time. This made
the catalog a valuable restoration aid and reference guide and set the
standard for all future Moss Motors catalogs.



A track favorite, Al raced his $B!H(BMG$B!I(B Morgan Three-Wheeler.

By 1978 Moss Motors was supplying parts for British sports cars to customers
worldwide, and in fact the business had become so large that it had ceased
to be fun for Al, being more like work! It was at this time, that his
long-time friend, Howard Goldman, offered to purchase the entire Moss Motors
operation. Al eventually took him up on his offer and entered
semi-retirement to spend much of his time restoring and racing his
collection of British sports cars at his home in Arizona.

At the age of 80, at the urging of his many friends, Al wrote his
autobiography: The Other Moss: My Life with Cars and Horses. Certainly there
will be many additional stories shared of the adventurous, thoughtful and
humor-filled life Al Moss vibrantly lived. We are saddened by his passing,
but so enriched by him having been with us