About Mossy Toyota - San Diego Region Toyota Dealership

Formerly known as "Pacific Beach Toyota" and "Mission Bay Toyota", Mossy Toyota is proud to serve the Clairmont and La Jolla part of the San Diego region with quality Toyota vehicles. With models like the Tundra, Tacoma, Camry, Corolla, Prius, RAV4, Highlander, 4Runner we have something for every taste, and every need. Come visit us at 4555 Mission Bay Dr.,  San Diego, CA to see our vehicle or take one for a test drive.

If you're looking for a San Diego used car, we can assist you there as well. Visit our inventory page to see the large collection of pre-owned vehicles to select from.

But, Mossy Toyota is not just a premier San Diego Toyota dealership, we also provide top services dedicated to our California customers. From car repairs performed by expert mechanics, OEM Toyota auto parts, to financing assistance, Mossy Toyota is the smart choice for your next vehicle or automotive needs.

Come in and say 'hi'! We're located at 4555 Mission Bay Dr., San Diego, CA, or you can call us at (888) 346-6779.

History of Mossy Toyota

1921 marks the entrance of the Mossy family into the automotive industry. That year, a young man named Wiley Mossy went to work selling Buicks in New Orleans. He liked the car business but working for someone else was not part of Wiley's long-term plan.

Over the next several years - and even in the face of the depression - Wiley managed to pull together the money needed to buy a dealership of his own. But in those days money wasn't enough. You see, General Motors only granted one-year franchises and it took knowing the right people who could pull the right strings to make it happen.

Whatever it took, Wiley did it and in 1934 he solidified the family's place in the industry with the acquisition of an Oldsmobile franchise in New Orleans. That franchise is still owned and operated today by one of Wiley's grandsons.

But the 1930s and 1940s were tumultuous times for the automotive industry and the nation. On December 30, 1936 a small group of committed activists started the famous Flint Sit Down Strike at General Motor's Fisher Body Plant No. 1. That one strike led to many others and tied up GM, the UAW and it's members - the auto workers - for the better of the next two years and virtually put a stop to vehicle production.

Now the question was, what was Mossy Oldsmobile going to do to survive while they didn't have many cars to sell. The answer? Sell Parts. People still owned cars and they needed to fix them and to fix them they needed Parts. By 1939, Wiley Mossy had expanded his operation to include the sale of parts for DeSoto, Plymouth and Hudson and had established the Parts department as an additional profit center.

Then came that day that will live in infamy - December 7, 1941. Within 24 hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had declared war on Japan and Germany and was thrown into the middle of World War II. And when you're in the middle of war, you need war machines fast. The auto makers responded by quickly converting their assembly lines to build bombs, tanks, planes, ships, and bullets instead of cars. The government also stepped in advising civilians to put off unnecessary repairs and encouraged them to keep their cars longer. By 1944, civilian's had to apply to the federal government to buy one of the nation's remaining 60,000 new cars. It was, once again, not a good time to be in the business of selling cars but somehow 85% of all dealers managed to stay afloat including Mossy Oldsmobile.

1945 marks the end of World War II and the entrance of Wiley's sons, Wiley Jr. and Roy into the family business. But the tough times weren't quite over. Once wartime wage-price controls were lifted, inflation took off. UAW members, believing that auto makers had made huge profits during the war, demanded workers receive wage increases. But GM begged to differ and so on November 21, 1945, 335,000 GM workers went out on strike once again this time for 113 days. When the strike finally settled, GM workers had an 18-cents-an-hour raise, new car prices had not been raised and the company turned its attention back to building cars. In the meantime, dealers facing huge demands and anxious to have anything to sell focused on used cars and prices went wild. The Office of Price Administration responded by placing ceilings on used car prices.

On the new car side, re-tooling Detroit's factories proved slow, automaker costs inevitably rose, dealers were given allotments based on pre-war sales and two-year waiting lists for new cars was not uncommon. Some not so scrupulous dealers took advantage of this high-demand, low-supply situation and created a public perception that all dealers were getting rich off the shortage. To set the record straight as far as Mossy was concerned, the father and sons team established and promoted a fair pricing philosophy that ultimately became the Mossy Value Pricing philosophy we know today.

The resumption of the local auto shows in 1949 signaled that life in the automotive business had settled down. Unfortunately peace would not last long. As the nation remobilized for the Korean War, dealers braced for another halt in car production and price controls were again slapped on the auto industry. To help pay for rearmament, Congress imposed a 7% excise tax on new cars pushing the average price of a car to $2,200. Although dealers fought for the repeal of the tax after the war, the tax was never lifted and was later raised to 10%.

After the Korean War, employment in the United States was at an all time high, Detroit set production records and, for the first time, dealers worried about too much of a good thing. And worry they should, they were facing higher supply, lower demand and increased competition from foreign imports. At the end of the 1950s, there were six car producing countries in the world but by 1964, a relative newcomer - Japan - had entered the competition and had swiftly grown to the fifth largest auto producer in the world.

Meanwhile back at home, studies were showing that the public didn't trust dealers, thought their profits were too high and were therefore taking their vehicles elsewhere for service. The National Automobile Dealers Association - commonly known as NADA - was urging dealers to adopt a code of ethics and started a nationwide workshop program to educate dealers on various aspects of running a successful dealership. The Mossy family had long been a member of NADA and the young Wiley Jr. - the more entrepreneurial of the two brothers - was anxious to learn all he could.

When NADA started its Professional Dealer Network program in 1968 with two groups of 10 dealers as a test, Wiley Jr. was there. The networks turned into a valuable source of ideas and Wiley Jr. brought many of them home to New Orleans. Unfortunately, new ways of selling and financing, the concept of wholesaling and the idea that the service aspect of the business was going to be a dealer's key to success were not favorably met by Wiley Sr. He was more interested in doing business they way they always had. And why not, look what they had survived and how they had prospered.

But Wiley wasn't convinced and that office he shared with Wiley Sr. and Roy was getting a bit cramped. Through his networks, Wiley learned of an Oldsmobile dealership in Houston that was up for sale. Between 1970 and 71, Wiley packed up his family, moved to Houston, purchased the Sam White Oldsmobile dealership and welcomed his oldest son, Phil, into the business.

Over the next 10 years Wiley Jr. continued to participate in the network and bring home new ideas. He welcomed sons David and Peter into the business and the business prospered despite the 1973 gas crisis and hard times falling on the oil-producing city of Houston.

Then around 1982, the office started feeling crowded again and once again the prodigal son, this time Phil, decided to strike out on his own. Phil landed in San Diego where he purchased the Nissan point in National City - the lowest ranked of eight points in the San Diego market - but not for long! Phil, with the help of brother Peter, took the lowest ranked point in the market to one of the top performing Nissan points in the country and would perform a similar feat with a small Ford point acquired in 1988.

Along the way of course, Phil got to try out some new ideas the most notable of which is the 1989 Silent Sale. For the Silent Sale, Mossy Nissan in National City marked every vehicle with a fair-market asking price and allowed customers to browse the lot without any salespeople hovering nearby. In fact the sales people were asked to wait inside until a customer requested assistance. Once a customer had picked out a vehicle, they were able to work out the details of the deal in a traditional but less pressured manner. The result? The dealership sold over 150 vehicles in a single weekend and the Mossy fair market pricing philosophy that emerged in the late 1940s gave way to the first generation of Mossy Value Pricing.
As a result of this great success, by 1990 prices were painted on all vehicles at Mossy Nissan and Mossy Ford - something no other dealership in town was doing at the time - and both dealerships were enjoying tremendous growth and success. 1990 also marked the expansion of the Houston dealership to include Nissan.

By the mid-1990s, Phil and Peter Mossy had increased their presence in San Diego with the expansion of the National City store to include Acura and the acquisition of the Nissan point in Kearny Mesa, had developed their own reputation of being forward thinkers and were highly regarded in the industry and by the manufacturers they represented.

In 1996, Nissan approached Phil and asked him to participate in two projects. The first, called Contiguous Market Ownership or CMO, would give the Mossy family the opportunity to purchase all of the Nissan dealerships in the San Diego area and operate them under one corporate structure. Nissan felt that by pairing up with one forward-thinking dealer in a given market, they could hand-in-hand better tackle the true competition, Honda and Toyota. Over the next year or so, the Mossy Nissan sign went up in Encinitas, Escondido and El Cajon and National City divested itself of Acura.
Around the same time, Nissan also offered Phil the opportunity to pilot another program, the Retail Performance Improvement Initiative. This initiative would give Mossy Nissan resources, tools and training on process improvement and continuous improvement. These initiatives, together with the Mossy family's long tradition of doing car business the right and fair way and Phil's desire to be a leader in the automotive revolution gave way to the development and implementation of the Mossy Way to Buy and the rest as they say, is history.

As of the year 2000, Mossy represents five nameplates - Oldsmobile, Nissan, Toyota, Ford and Pontiac - and operates in nine dealerships in three major markets, New Orleans, Houston and San Diego