Before he enrolled in kindergarten, John Moulton took somebody's watch apart, spread out the parts, then tried to put it back together again. Then he began tinkering with radios. Before long, he was wrenching on his own motorcycle.
"I was only 12," he says. "I wasn't supposed to ride it." Though the statute of limitations almost has expired on any crimes he committed as a sixth-grader, he leaves the story there, moving on to when, at age 15, he became the proud owner of a 1935 Ford pickup.
"I got the truck before I got my driver's license, but was never able to drive it," he remembers. "Turned out, it had a cracked block, so that one turned out to be a learning experience for me. I found out later that a lot of the early Ford V8s had cracked blocks."
Most of Moulton's life — almost 66 years of it — has been a learning experience, the kind of nicked-knuckle, black-fingernail education that only comes from endless hours under the hood or the undercarriage of a vehicle somebody else probably gave up on.
"The most-expensive car I ever owned was a 1963 (Mercedes) 300SL," he says. "I paid $12,000 for it, and it didn't run when I bought it. I got it running, fixed it up and sold it in 1988 for $85,000."
He has parlayed his passion into a reputation as one of the go-to guys in Monterey County for vintage-car knowledge.
In 1995, Moulton became one of five co-founders of Marina Motorsports (slogan: "Wheels in Motion for Community Benefit"), which
He's a board member for the 20-year-old Cherry's Jubilee Motorsports Festival. The self-described "biggest oldies party of the year" attracts classic cars from far and wide every September for a six-day showcase on the Monterey Peninsula, for the benefit of Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital Foundation.
Three years ago, he christened The Little Car Show, a convention of itty-bitty, cuter-than-a-Bug automobiles, free to spectators, in downtown Pacific Grove, always on a Wednesday in mid-August, during the Peninsula's annual "Classic Car Week." (legendary car customizer Wayne Carini gave Moulton's show some validation this year when he showed up with a camera crew.) The Little Car Show has blossomed from 40 cars in 2010 to 90 in 2012.
"The thing about John is he cuts across all the various car cultures, from rat-rodding to haute classic," said friend and fellow gearhead Charlie Davis, who met Moulton when they were both sophomores at Pacific Grove High. "He's owned more cars than anybody I've ever known — from Detroit jalopies to a Mercedes 300SL. He has Jay Leno's home phone number. And he's been a fixture on the local automotive scene — I mean as a player — since the mid-'60s, when he was just a teenager. I've seen him stuff 7-liter Ford V8s into tiny European subcompacts."
In 1978, he and James A. Miller created JAM Engineering, a shop where they developed and marketed carburetor conversions for more than 30 different models of German and Japanese vehicles. By 1987, JAM was developing a diagnostic computer for engine management systems, and the following year they formed a separate research and development company called Elexis.
Miller retired in1993, but Moulton still runs JAM today from the San Benancio Road home he shares with his wife, Skye, who, in 1969, posed for her wedding pictures in the passenger seat of a street-legal dragster her newlywed hubby had assembled just weeks earlier in his back yard.
"She's not a car person, and my habit probably has gotten a lot worse since we got married," he admits with a hint of a smile. "But if I buy something, I always try to get a good deal on it. Then I'll put sweat equity into the car, but not a lot of cash, so I usually break even, or make something on the deal."
Moulton grew up as a military kid. His dad, James Moulton II, had a tour at Fort Ord, at least three at the Monterey Presidio, then, after learning Cantonese, was sent to Taiwan (where the language is Mandarin), then Malaysia. Marjorie Moulton, John's mom, was a seamstress who made custom draperies. The family lived wherever Dad was stationed. John entered the Pacific Grove school system when he was in the fourth grade.
"My car in high school was a Jaguar XK 120. I used to race it at the drag strip they had at the time at the Salinas Airport," Moulton recalls. "But I got away from the hands-on drag racing stuff in the late 1960s, before I got married."
From 1970-72, he owned a Phillips 66 station in Pacific Grove, then got hired at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he worked for the next 33 years.
"I was a model maker there, kind of a glorified machinist, creating models for their wind tunnel, and doing thesis projects," he says.
Davis cuts through some of his friend's modesty.
"He's a sought-after aerospace machinist, and if there's a category of welder beyond 'master,' he's in it," he says.
"He hasn't always been that meticulous, though. When I first met him, he had a '51 Chevy with an Olds V8 chained and bolted to the frame. No motor mounts. As I recall, this presented some torque problems. The motor twisted itself off the frame rather spectacularly one day during a drag race on Pine Street."
Amid handling his daily duties as proprietor of JAM Engineering Inc., Moulton works on a half-dozen vehicles in various stages of repair and restoration in his garage and barn. A Sunbeam Tiger, a Daimler, and a Morris Traveler station wagon are among his current projects, along with a classic motorcycle, a '52 Harley WLA military motorcycle with the sidecar Bud Ekins (Steve McQueen's stuntman in "The Great Escape") had on his 1936 Harley BL during "The Cannonball Run," a coast-to-coast race that took place four times in the 1970s (inspiring a Burt Reynolds film). The sidecar has original artwork by Kenny "Von Dutch" Howard on its body.
"When I buy a car now, I try to get one that at least runs," Moulton says with a laugh. "I've had my Morris Traveler for about 10 years, and haven't done much to it. We've owned the Jaguar since 1975 — it was my wife's grocery-getter — but it started to have some issues, it's been on the rack since 1997. I really don't want any more projects that are totally apart. I'm getting too many of those."
Dennis Taylor can be reached at 646-4344 or firstname.lastname@example.org.