Moss Cars


Moss Cars was a British kit car manufacturer active between 1981 and 1997. Originally doing business in Sheffield as the Moss Motor Company, they renamed the company Moss Sportscars after a fire in 1985. A period of instability followed, with various investors taking over but not meeting with any success; the company finally became Moss Cars after a move to Bath in 1987. The company was defunct in 1997, although some sources state that kits were still being produced as late as 2000. Their designs were all by founder John Cowperthwaite, who also founded JC Autopatterns, creator of the JC Midge and Locust cars. The company built three main designs, all GRP bodyshells originally intended to be placed atop a Triumph Herald/Vitesse or Spitfire chassis.

History

Cowperthwaite started out by restoring MGs from 1975; in 1981 he launched his own company and designs.
By the early 1980s, Heralds and Spitfires were gradually becoming hard to find, or at least more expensive. To solve this problem, Moss developed their own chassis for their kits. The new, bespoke chassis could be fitted with either Ford or Triumph mechanicals. After the fire, Cowperthwaite founded a series of new companies in rapid succession, trying to keep his cars in production, but none made more than a handful until he sold the rights to outside investors who founded Moss Cars in 1987.
Moss' designs included the Roadster/Malvern, clearly inspired by the Morgan +4, "Malvern" being a reference to Malvern, Worcestershire, where the Morgan Motor Company has been operating for over a century. Their second design was the simple Monaco, a barrel-shaped, cycle-fendered design with a small windscreen and minimal creature comforts. While built out of GRP, the body incorporated visual references to classic, aluminium-bodied racers such as false rivets and seams. The third design was the Mamba, a short-lived design inspired by the earlier, Giulietta Spider-inspired Auto Kraft Continental kit. Herald/Vitesse-based, it used a plywood/fibreglass sandwich floor. Only a handful were built by Moss between 1983 and 1985, and the kit has been described as "crude" and of low quality. During 1987, this was also briefly offered as the Mamba Phoenix by CSA Character Cars out of Radstock.

Products