The humble beginnings of MoonEyes USA

While writing up a Hot Rod Hero column on Dean Moon for an upcoming issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines, I consulted a copy of David Fetherston’s “Moon Equipped: Sixty Years of Hot Rod Photo Memories,” and much like during my research on Frank Kurtis, I wanted to know more about the shops out of which Dean Moon operated.

As it turns out, he only operated out of two shops of his own, though he also worked for a nearby dealership. The latter of those two shops has become a sort of institution for Southern California hot rodders and other gearheads: the MoonEyes USA headquarters at 10820 S. Norwalk Boulevard in Santa Fe Springs, California. The location still stands and still houses MoonEyes USA today, and you can even see the famous logo painted in their driveway in satellite photos.

The dealership – Urich-Gibbs Lincoln-Mercury, was where Moon worked for a while after World War II until shortly after he returned from the Korean War. I found an address for it at 101 E. Whittier Boulevard in Whittier, California. It appears Whittier Boulevard has since been renumbered, so it’s now hard to tell where Urich-Gibbs was located.

Moon’s first shop, which he operated from his youth until the late 1950s, had a much more humble aspect. He ran it out of the garage behind his father’s diner, a building that, according to Fetherston, Pop Moon bought and already housed Tessie’s Cafe. Pop changed the name to Moon Cafe, and eventually started a go-kart track, called Moonza, on the property. Fetherston wrote:

However, there were forces at play which were out of Dean’s control and which became an important part in shaping his future. The lease on Pop Moon’s eleven acres wasn’t firm and a new corporation bought the property with plans to turn it into a tank farm.

So where was the Moon Cafe? Fetherston included several photos of Dean’s cars in front of the cafe, but an address came from the image of a water decal that Fetherston included: 10935 South Bloomfield Avenue, Norwalk, California. Looking at that location today, we can see that a tank farm remains on that property. We can also see that it’s no more than a block away from the current MoonEyes USA location.

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