LFRED MOSS, the father of our President Sir Stirling Moss, entered motorsport, like many young men in the early 1920s, at the wheel of a sporting cyclecar. 

He took part in hillclimbs and sprints with an AV Bicar and a GN before acquiring a 1496cc Anzani-engined Crouch 11.9 hp light car, which first appeared in competition in the February 1923 Essex MC Winter Trial, run over two circuits of a 50-mile course in the Epping Forest area. Sadly, the name of Alfred Moss failed to figure in the results.

More promising was his Brooklands debut in March the same year, when he entered his Crouch for the Junior Car Club’s Annual Trial, which mostly took place within the confines of Brooklands apart from a short road run which started from a service station in Kingston Vale. The Brooklands part of the event included tests on the track and Test Hill.

The Autocar reported that Moss was “very good” in the acceleration test and made fastest flying lap at 61.64 mph. In the afternoon two-lap handicap race, Moss started on scratch, too far back to catch the more favourably handicapped GNs which kept ahead of the faster cars and finished 1-2. Moss came second in Class 5 and fourth in the overall classification after such well-known Brooklands figures as E B Ware (Morgan), Archie Frazer-Nash (GN) and D Chinery (Gwynne 8).

Boddy records that Moss won the Private Competitors’ Handicap at the Easter 1923 meeting in the Crouch. He next raced at the Whitsun Meeting, when a photo published in Autocar showed Moss, sitting low down in the cockpit to cut wind resistance, duelling with J C Douglas in his Aston Martin “Nigger”.

At the August meeting, the Crouch was out again, in the Small Car Handicap, but was dogged by “ill-luck”. Compensation came at the Autumn meeting – postponed to 26 September after it had been rained off on the 15th – when the Crouch – by now enough of a veteran to be known as “Grandpa” - won the 75 mph Short Handicap at 71.25 mph.

In mid-October came the 200-Mile Race, run as two separate events, one for cars up to 1100cc class and the other - held in the afternoon – for cars under 1500cc. The Crouch was one of the starters in a 1500cc event depleted by non-starters (including two Aston-Martins “which were not built in time”). Nevertheless, “there were sufficient cars… to make a really good race”. But it was not Alfred Moss’s day.  He and his mechanic sadly pushed the Crouch into the pits with a blown head gasket on its 29th lap after a “terrific battle” with Parry Thomas’s Marlborough-Thomas.

But Alfred Moss had his sights set high, recalls Sir Stirling: “Dad’s great ambition was to race in the Indianapolis 500. He was training to be a dentist, and he managed to persuade my grandfather that Indianapolis was the world centre for studying dental bridgework. 

Once he got there, he talked his way into the Barber-Warnock Ford team for the 1924 Indy 500 race, and came in 16th. 

He might not have finished in the money, but at least he finished ahead of such great names as Eddie Hearne, Joe Boyer and two-times winner Tommy Milton, all of whom failed to cover the distance!”

Having qualified, Alfred Moss was back in England in 1925. Presumably, while in Indianapolis, he had picked up a copy of the $2.00 booklet “How  to build a Fronty-Ford” from the Chevrolet Brothers, builders of the Barber-Warnock Specials. 

When he arived home, he built himself a Fronty-Ford-Speedsport on a shortened Model T chassis, which he raced at Brooklands in 1925-26. 

The high point of its racing career was victory in the 75-mph Short Handicap at the 1925 Brooklands August Bank Holiday Meeting.

Feature by David Burgess-Wise, Brooklands Society Committee Member.

Brooklands Society members can read more articles like this one in the quarterly Brooklands Society Gazette. If you want to join, click here.