Adding to his car collection, one letter at a time

CHOCORUA, N.H. -- A is for a 1912 Auto-Carrier (AC) three-wheeler Box Van.

B is for a 1911 Brasier Runabout.

C is for a 1930 Cadillac V16 Roadster with a Fleetwood body.

Hang on, let's stop here and back up -- or go forward with the rest of the alphabet.

And going forward is exactly what collector John Moir did in the late 1980s when he realized that he had three cars whose names started with the first three letters of the alphabet.

Actually, he said it was his wife, Heather, who realized it. "You've got your A, B and C, and if you're not careful you'll have the whole alphabet," he said she told him.

"And I thought, 'Well, why not?'"

Moir now has a collection of about 40 cars, including at least one for every letter of the alphabet -- yes, right up through X, Y and Z. He keeps the collection in a large, two-part barn in this hamlet nestled between New Hampshire's Lake District and the White Mountains. A whimsical former high school English teacher in his 80s, Moir calls the building housing his collection the Ca'a Bahn.

He and his wife have three sons -- in California, Florida and Virginia -- and three grandsons.

Both the 1911 Brasier and the 1930 Cadillac were purchased by Moir's father as family cars. The Brasier was his father's first car and Moir remembers him late in life rumbling off in it to get the mail and the newspapers in the morning.

The Cadillac, a massive beauty worth close to $500,000 and Moir's declared favorite, was his own first car. Moir said the car scared his father with its massive engine -- two straight 8's leading into each other -- so he passed it on to his son to drive around Harvard College as a somewhat entitled undergraduate.

Moir has an intimate knowledge of all his cars and lovingly gives a small lecture on each, every so often pulling a long flashlight from the back of his baggy trousers to highlight an element of the body or engine that particularly fascinates him.

Often he is intrigued with what he calls "an elegant solution" to some mechanical challenge. "Each designer solves different problems in his own way," he said.

Another C, for example, a 1902 Covert 1-cylinder Runabout, has a two-speed chain drive, an air-cooled cylinder and water cooled head. Its title shows it belonged to a Miss Gertrude Wooden of Ypsilanti, Mich.

And looking over a 1929 Ford Model A converted into a rudimentary snowmobile sedan with skis attached to the front wheels and caterpillar tracks to the double rear wheels, he said: "It was an elegant solution to a problem that does not bother us any more." He explained that before snow plows, the snow was packed down on roads for months during the winter and people used sleighs and sleds to get around.

Meanwhile, D is a 1900 De Dion Bouton Model 30 Voiturette from France.

One of the results of forming his collection around the alphabet is that Moir has ended up with a fascinatingly eclectic collection, including any number of marques that not only have long gone out of business but are little known outside the world of car collecting.

For example, E is for a 1911 E.M.F. Roadster, while H is for a 1953 H.R.G. Roadster, both companies being named after the initials of their founders. E.M.F. was an American manufacturer that produced automobiles from 1909 to 1912; H.R.G. a British manufacturer that produced a total of 241 cars from 1936 to 1956.

"If you loved one of these, you loved it to death," said Moir. "If you didn't, you didn't know anything about it."

Indeed, in some cases, there were only a very small number of the cars produced in the first place. The 1984 Zoe Zipper is a case in point. He said only about 50 of the three-wheeled microcars with a 50cc Honda motorcycle engine were produced by Mitsuoka Motors of Japan. It was introduced in the United States in 1983, but never sold well, partly because it only had one seat.

(Moir also owns a 1910 Le Zebre Cyclecar Model 13, which he said he found "buried in a manure pile, its rear end gone.")

F is for a 1933 Ford V-8 Woodie with its solid wood paneling and replica 1950's wood surfboard on the roof. Moir said the design, which became synonymous with the southern California surfing community, was based on peddlers' wagons.

G is for a 1914 Godfrey & Nash Cyclecar, one of the earliest still in existence. A distinguishing feature was the small cone set on the nose, "providing a tin man approach to streamlining."

I is for an International Charette, with its two-speed belt drive and rear seat situated well behind the rear axle. "A large mother-in-law (sitting in the back) could tip the whole thing over," Moir said, grinning.

J is for a 1928 Jowett Sport Racer Model 1/17, the only pre-World War II Jowett in the nation. K is for a 1911 Kelsey Motorette, a three-wheeler that took eight months to drive from Hartford, Conn., to San Francisco when it was new -- and the roads were horrendous.

L is for a magnificent 1934 Lancia Belna Eclipse model with a Pourtant body and disappearing roof. Moir restored it to a bold yellow and black from "pink and silver with a Naugahyde interior."

M is for a 1927 Morgan Aero three-wheeler and a 1999 Mazda RX-7, a sporty car styled like a Lotus Élan and featuring a twin-rotor Wankel rotary engine. N is for a 1953 Nash Healey Roadster, an American (Nash engine)-British (Healey chassis) venture with a Farina body.

O is for a charming 1904 Orient Buckboard made in Waltham, Mass. The sprightly two-seater originally sold for just $425. It looks as though it could quite easily be harnessed to a horse, and indeed sports a heavy-duty muffler that perhaps reflects its life alongside horse-drawn vehicles. For many years, the driver of a car was legally liable for the damage caused by frightened horses if it could be proved that his vehicle's backfiring engine started the commotion.

P is for a 1937 Packard Woodie station wagon with a Baker-Raulang body. According to faded lettering on the door, the vehicle served for years as a jitney for a hotel in North Woodstock, N.H.

Q is for a 1905 Queen Model C Runabout, an English car produced in 1904 and 1905 and advertised as the "car for the million or the millionaire." And R is for a splendid 1931 Rolls-Royce 20/25 Drophead Coupe with a Ramseier body. The 20/25 was built between 1929 and 1936 as the luxury automaker's small car.

S is for a 1963 Studebaker Avanti, radically styled by famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy. Moir said his wife drove the striking car every day for years. Another S is a 1909 Stanley Steamer Model E2 that he has kept unrestored, complete with wooden mudguards.

T is for a Triumph TR-3A, while U is for a 1911 Unic Phaeton that was used as a taxi in South Africa for many years.

V is for one of the stars of his collection, a French 1925 Voisin Model C3L with Rothschild coach work, a formidable Art Deco-styled six-seater with a plush interior. And with sleeve valves on the aluminum pistons, the motor was extremely quiet.

W is for a small, unrestored 1921 Wolseley Coupe that must have been owned by someone with short legs, as the pedals have wooden blocks attached to them.

Y is for a 1923 Yellow Cab Model A-2, while X is for a replica, a very low-slung 1999 Xanthos 23 Lotus race car, which Moir says his sons have fun driving around the lanes of New Hampshire.

Which brings us to Z and the end of the ABC collection -- but we've already discussed the Zoe Zipper and the Le Zebre Cyclecar.

As for the future, Moir said he is not currently adding to his collection. "I am not actively looking for cars," he said.

"In fact I have been actively told not to acquire more cars," he added, referring to she who must be obeyed.