All My Own Work

Building a kit car appealed to Trevor Collett because he loves Heralds and is pretty handy when it comes to mechanical work, but is considerably less keen on bodywork. That made the Moss Malvern 2+2 an ideal choice, and one that still puts a smile on his face after more than three decades.

 

My interest in kit cars started when I saw a picture of an RMB Gentry in one of the TSSC’s first magazines (I’d been a Herald owner since 1978).. I remember wondering what an MG was doing in the magazine, but read the blurb and realised what was going on. This would have been around 1981. I started to investigate what was available and found there were other companies such as Marlin, Spartan and Moss doing similar things. The reason for my interest was two-fold.

Firstly, I am not a welder and a kit car meant I could work on the mechanical side without having to get involved with bodywork, and secondly it was a way of getting something different without spending a fortune on a Morgan or MG.

I settled on the Moss because they had introduced the Malvern with its 2+2 seating. That appealed to me not because I wanted room for passengers in the back, but because it would be more practical, if only at the level of having somewhere to throw my briefcase when I went to the office.

Also, the Gentry had a reputation for being quite tricky to build as it is a complex construction, whereas the Moss is almost (but not quite) one piece of fibreglass that you shove onto the Herald chassis. The upside of the Gentry construction is that if they are built properly then they are very solid cars, but the Moss – much as I love it – always shakes a little bit.

Besides, although the MG TF is a lovely shape and the Gentry copies that, I liked the fact that the Moss was its own car. True the wings are moulded from an MG TF and the grille is a Jaguar copy so it does mix and match different styles, but to my mind it all works together well.