Triumphest ’91 in Arizona

Our Team of Triumph Enthusiasts Have the Time of Their Lives

Every year Moss Motors receives hundreds of invitations from clubs and organizations all over the country to attend British Car Days, swap meets, and various other events. This is our chance to meet with customers and keep in touch with your needs. True to this theme, we made the decision long ago to parlay our presence at events into an opportunity to spend time really getting to know you, occasionally helping out with an emergency transmission swap in the parking lot, or fixing various Lucas ailments… instead of just taking parts orders.

This Halloween, we packed the RV, three Triumphs, one ex-Triumph design engineer (a.k.a. Tony Lee), and headed easterly from California for one of the finest auto shows to be found of any type; Triumphest. This year’s event was held in Lake Havasu, Arizona and represented the tenth anniversary of the first major gathering for Triumphs west of the Mississippi. Having just arrived from the east coast, Triumphest also represented my first ever event anywhere even remotely west of Tennessee.

Sponsored by the Desert Center Triumph Register of America, Triumphest has steadily grown and matured through the years, and we were anxious to wrap up the year’s events enjoying the pleasant winter weather for which Arizona is famous. Joining us from England, we were lucky enough to have the company of both Peter Wigglesworth and Tony Lee. Peter develops Triumph goodies for Moss Europe, and as you will read about in this issue, Tony Lee worked as a Development Engineer with Triumph through the fifties and sixties, and then with Leyland and later The Rover Group until his retirement in 1989 after 43 years of service!

From our California headquarters we readily assembled our Triumph crew, issued them custom T-shirts made up by our art department, and instructed them say “go Triumph”! Our group included Eric Wilhelm and myself, from R&D, and Peter Arakelian from our domestic purchasing department who brought along his everyday TR6. Also making the trip were: Moss Chairman, Howard Goldman, our financial wizard, Roger Adcock, and Ken and Barbara Smith, who fearlessly handedout free catalogs and kept track of all the special discount order forms we received.

The weather for thee vent turned out to be spectacular, and we had a terrific drive out in our Triumphs. The 400 plus miles of California and Arizona countryside that we crossed was simply breathtaking. Driving across the desert that night in my TR250, I realized that there are few things in life I enjoy doing as much as this.

Once we arrived at the beautiful London Bridge Resort we settled in and enjoyed the local hospitality and food, before retiring for the evening. On Friday, we reacquainted ourselves with old friends and made many new ones. Peter Wigglesworth and I even participated in the “funkhana”. Why was I the one who had to put on the Hula skirt anyway?

On Saturday, we assembled the Moss RV & display just outside the golf course where the Concours was held, and set out to inspect some of the great looking cars we saw roll in on Friday. Of great interest to me was a particular B.R.G. TR250 I had seen the day before, whose owner said had accumulated only sixty-thousand miles from new. May this gentleman please forgive me for not recalling his name!

Anyway, we enjoyed looking at all of our favorite cars, the vendor displays, andgetting a suntan in the process. Peter W made something of a tech session out of changing the generator on the Moss TR3 (supplied by our very own Moss overnight service). We appreciate everyone’s help on this one. Eric dug in and got dirty helping a fellow having carb problems with an Austin-Healey. I know. I know, this was a “Triumphest”, right? We spent many enjoyable hours chatting and sharing restoration ideas, tips, and stories. Back east we used to call this process of thinly disguising stretches of the truth “bench-racing.”

As the sun set over the mountains on Saturday evening, everyone gathered for a terrific Mexican buffet dinner in the assembly hall. We then enjoyed listening to our guest speaker, Tony Lee, tell stories about both his adventures and misadventures with Triumph. We are truly indebted to him for his interest in spending time with us, and we at Moss learned a great deal from him about “the way things were really done.”

Awards were given out for cars judged in the previous day’s Concours, as well as door prizes for lots of folks. Moss was presented with a beautiful plaque of appreciation for which we are very proud. The partying and reminiscing of events, now past, went on until late in the evening. Many people came from distant cities and states, so the next morning most folks got up quite early to begin the trek back home. Having breakfast the next morning in the hotel, many goodbyes were overheard, including our own.

From all of us at Moss, I would like to express our heartfelt appreciation to all of our customers, to the great people of the Desert Center Triumph Register, and for the endless enthusiasm that has propelled Moss to become the largest supplier of British auto spares In the world. We will definitely be back next year, so see you then.

By

David Elchelbaum

Research &Development