Moss Manager – Lawrie Alexander

From Moss Motoring 1983

Lawrie Alexander has been a fan of British sports cars ever since he was a youngster growing up in England. As a schoolboy in the fifties, he experienced first-hand the excitement of reading about Jaguar XK 120’s, MGA’s, TR’s and Austin Healey’s beating the worlds’ best cars in races and rallies. Many hours were spent drooling in new car showrooms, reading road tests, comparing performance figures, as well as watching such greats as Mike Hawthorn, Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, et al, performing on Britain’s great club circuits.

Lawrie in action at Laguna Seca, where his “KT” placed first in the “MG only” division in 1980. Below, his sparkling “TD Hot Rod.”

The typical ‘impecunious enthusiast’, Lawrie’s racing career started with a succession of pre-war, clapped out sedans which were patched together to run, providing an excellent grounding in basic mechanics. In 1960, an MG PA (in pretty sad condition!) became his first ‘real car; in this, much was learned about driving quickly and the vagaries of owning a sports car. Marriage in 1963 saw the PA replaced by a Y-type MG sedan, which was sold when he left for Singapore for four years in 1964. There his competition career began in earnest, with a Jot of rallying on jungle roads, sprints, hill climbs and driving tests in an Alfa-Romeo special and a much tuned Triumph Herald.

Coming to the U.S.A. in 1968, he drove “Detroit iron” for a few years until a ’63 MGB started the juices flowing again in 1972. A move to Santa Barbara saw the B sold, an MG TF 1250 purchased, and the beginning of his association with Moss Motors. The TF was the subject of a ground up restoration (it’s the one on the Moss MGT-20 catalog cover), and also led to his purchase of Classic Car Company; This business soon became more oriented toward sports cars than American Classics, and Lawrie became a customer of Moss Motors as his business turned out numerous outstanding restorations. In 1980, Lawrie joins Moss’s management team and Classic Car Co. became a division of Moss, he now puts his administrative talents to good use as Manager of the Sales and Art and Advertising Departments as well as Supervisor of the Restoration Shop.

The love affair with cars continues, as Lawrie now owns a Jaguar XJ 6, an Austin Healey 100-4 LeMans, an MG PA (awaiting restoration), an MG 1100 and two other, rather unique, MG’s. One is his famous “KT”—a TD special which is bodied to resemble a boat-tailed K3 and which has proven itself on the Vintage Race circuit since 1978. The other is his “TD Hot Rod’—a TD built with many of the custom features found on these cars when they were on the roads in the mid-fifties, including a one-of-a-kind double overhead camshaft XPAG motor. Both these cars were built by Lawrie from spare parts and both attest to his mechanical ability and desire for perfection. In addition to his cars, Lawrie also enjoys bicycling, motorcycling, sailing a C-15, and playing racquetball. A busy man holding down a busy job at Moss Motors.