Irvine, Calif – Glenn and Gigi Moss are irresistible. I’ve been with them for less than half a day and it’s obvious that they are still in love today as they were when they first met in 1976.
45 years is a long time for any couple to stick together, especially if you meet as a teenager (she was 17, he was 15).
But their relationship blossomed, growing into kids, grandchildren, and a successful third generation auto dealer in Riverside, California. And when it was time to celebrate her 40th wedding anniversary, Glenn decided to grow up. Very large.
It is important to pause for a moment to talk about two things. First, Rolls-Royce very, very seldom talks about the customers who order its automobiles. In fact, this is the only time in all of my years that I’ve covered cars that the company has ever introduced me to a Rolls-Royce owner. So when Rolls-Royce PR invited me to Orange County to meet Glenn and Gigi, I took the opportunity.
Second, the pair are not what a typical Rolls-Royce buyer would be imagined by. The Phantom starts at over $ 500,000 and goes up sharply from there as you add options. And a special Rolls-Royce Collection car like the Phantom Tempus that Glenn bought was likely to cost more than $ 750,000.
Courtesy of photos
It’s rare for a first-time Rolls-Royce buyer to pick up a Phantom, let alone a limited-edition car like this one. Glenn had been in the auto business all his life thanks to his family’s dealerships, but until a few years ago he had never driven a Rolls – and was thinking of buying one.
He’s not a king from Kardashian or the Middle East. He is a successful car dealer in Riverside. He’s the guy you’d like to have a beer with, not someone you’d expect to own one of the most expensive cars in the world.
But a partnership between Rolls-Royce and American Express resulted in Glenn and Gigi borrowing a Rolls-Royce Dawn (the convertible) for a day a few years ago. “It’s a different world,” Glenn told me in an interview. “I’m a car dealer and I’ve driven a lot of cars and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I love Honda and Toyota and Chrysler,” he said, naming the brands of cars that made his car purchase possible. “But that’s just another world.”
After a few years, Glenn finally decided to buy a Phantom as an anniversary present, even though he had never driven one before. The only Rolls he’d ever ridden was the Dawn, which he’d borrowed for a day years ago, but he knew he wanted the best. Kellyn Dixon, his Rolls-Royce saleswoman, was shocked. Little did she know he’d bought a car for three quarters of a million dollars without ever trying it out. “I didn’t have to,” Glenn replied simply.
“He’s been in the auto business all his life and [individual] Cars mean nothing to him, ”Gigi told me. “Except for those who do.”
Despite her husband’s job, Gigi was never really into cars. She was a kindergarten teacher and all of her cars had dealership signs. If someone wanted to buy her car, it was sold away immediately.
“I get it Monday, it can be sold on Thursday,” she explained. “I’ve never been hooked on my cars.” Before even owning the dealerships, Gigi had never owned a new car – she only had lore from her brothers before she got demo cars from the dealerships for the past few decades.
That said, her light red (light red, in German) Black Badge Rolls-Royce Dawn was Gigi’s very first new car. “For the first time I chose my own car,” Gigi told me vividly. “These are the first cars I’ve been looking forward to. These are our cars. “
Although she knew about the Phantom, he surprisingly drove to the Rolls-Royce dealer so that she could choose her car too. “I thought we were going to go shopping and drove to the dealership,” she said. “Glenn said ‘I’m going to buy you a car’ and I tried to get out of there … a little.”
The cars in the Rolls-Royce Collection are something very special for the company. Rather than building custom-made cars (a bespoke order), Collection vehicles are completely processed by the company’s in-house design team. The Phantom Tempus was inspired by time, space and Albert Einstein – on a plaque in the glove compartment emblazoned a quote from the famous physicist: “The distinction between past, present and future is only a persistent illusion.”
The inner roof is covered with a must-see, embroidered and painted rendition of a pulsar star. The incredible Starlight headliner has been adapted to the theme and for the first time thousands of extra Starlight fiber optic cables have been attached to the doors to make them glow too.
On the dashboard is a sculpture of 100 individual pillars carved from a single piece of aluminum to represent the 100 million year period of rotation of a pulsar star. The Phantom Tempus is also the first modern Rolls-Royce to dispense with an analog clock in the dashboard, an absence intended to remind the owner that they are not tied to the time.
The date, latitude and longitude when Glenn and Gigi first met are engraved under the massive silver Spirit of Ecstasy, the winged Rolls-Royce emblem on the front of the Phantom bonnet.
The Rolls-Royce Dawn from Gigi cannot be outdone with a Spirit of Ecstasy carved from carbon fiber with a different date and engraved coordinates. This time it reminds of the time and place of their wedding 40 years ago.
That makes these cars a coordinated set and probably something unique to Rolls-Royce. Typically, Collection cars like the Phantom Tempus have very strict guidelines on what can be changed to take the hard work of the
Design team. But Glenn made more changes to his Phantom than perhaps anyone else who bought the collection, the Rolls-Royce team told me.
He changed the exterior color (to a triple clearcoat alpine white with tiny crystals embedded in the topcoat so it sparkles in the sun), the hand-painted coachline, the interior color, and a few other decorative components. Apparently it took meeting after meeting to convince the design team to let it go, but in the end Glenn got his car exactly the way he wanted it.
And he was finally allowed to drive it too. Glenn told me via email that his new Phantom is “absolutely the greatest vehicle I have ever driven” and that, like the Dawn a few years ago, it “floats on a cloud”.
He concluded by saying that between his wife and his cars, “my real thoughts are how lucky I am.”
