Moss Marque Days A Big Success

From Moss Motoring 1983

July 23rd, 1983, will go down in Moss Motors’ history books as the date another great new venture began. Some one hundred sixty Austin Healey enthusiasts came to our Goleta office, many of them driving their Healeys, for our first-ever “Moss Marque Day”.

Arriving at 7:45 a.m., we found several ‘early birds’ pacing the forecourt, anxiously waiting first crack at the “Swap Meet” stuff we had for sale. Between 8:00 and 5:00, we gave some great bargains on discontinued items, shop-soiled parts and other miscellaneous bits and pieces. How nice to be able to clear off some shelves and gain happy customers at the same time!

During the day, we were treated to an ever-changing display of Austin Healeys, as several clubs and many individuals pulled up to visit us. We got to see some neat cars, while their owners enjoyed tours of our facility, free coffee and donuts; a preview of our new Austin Healey upholstery, a chance to examine Al Moss’s immaculately restored 100-4 Le Mans and the rolling chassis of a 100-6 which is undergoing restoration at Classic Car Company. Oh yes, the special 10% discount on orders placed that day was also welcomed!

It was interesting to see how many Healey owners were not aware of the clubs. Hopefully, a number of new recruits were signed up; at any rate, we saw several people exchanging names and addresses. One woman, with great initiative, was browsing our Guest Book, looking for names of other Healey owners in her part of the country!

We at Moss enjoyed the day so much we have decided to organize many more Marque Days in 1984. (September 10th, 1983 is scheduled for a Triumph Day, but that story will not make this newsletter.) We believe these gatherings can be beneficial in many ways to many people, as well as being a lot of fun. Hopefully, they can grow into real “events”, with marque owners and clubs making the trip to Santa Barbara (of which Goleta is a suburb) for a weekend which includes a day of motoring activities at Moss Motors. Maybe we can do the same for our East Coast customers at our New Jersey facility, too.

Why not a Concours d’Elegance or Funkhana as part of the day? If enough interest is shown, we would certainly be willing to put up Trophies. All we need is a club to organize the event and handle the parking, etc. If anyone is interested, drop Lawrie Alexander a line at Moss and let’s see what we can put together. Then, in the first 1984 issue’ of Moss Motoring we can publish a schedule of dates for the marque weekends and everyone (especially the clubs) can schedule them into their year’s activities.