IF YOU or I were 100 years old, chances are we wouldn’t be anywhere near as quick, agile or downright good-looking as Morgan’s motors.
In fact, if the Malvern manufacturer’s series of sports cars had aged like the rest of us they’d no doubt be fighting off wrinkles and middle age spread. Instead, they’re fighting off the cream of the sports car world with a blend of space-age mechanics and bygone styling charm, and that’s part of the reason why so many people fall in love with them.
Morgan is just one of those motor firms that seems shrouded in mystique built up over decades of defiantly refusing to change the look of its products; the waiting lists that run into years, the cars lovingly made with bits of wood, the TV documentary where industrialist Sir John Harvey Jones urged to it to modernise or die.
Yet for all the mystery, the company’s still soldiering on a century after it constructed its first cars.
Anyone doubting Morgan’s ability to modernise is in for a shock if they visit any of the company’s showrooms, including Lifes Motors, in Southport.
In 2000 the Aero 8 challenged car fans with its unconventional looks but its utterly modern mechanics made it a rocketship roadster, still proving popular almost a decade later.
Yet the cars the company is still best known for are the traditional roadsters, which have faithfully followed the same stunning lines since the early Sixties. Not that many people know the shape’s actually registered as a trademark - and that’s a distinction it shares not with other sports cars, but design classics like the Coke bottle.
With its swoops and curves and lashings of chrome on the bumpers, grille and windscreen, machines like the 4/4 I’ve been driving look like they’ve escaped from a birthday card. Even before you get in it’s busy evoking images of quaint village pubs dotted across miles of empty country roads, in an era long before traffic jams were invented.
Unfortunately, it’s 2009 and losing my Morgan virginity meant threading it through Southport town centre, at roughly the same time as every child in the region finished school. Taking any unfamiliar car out can be a little daunting at first, but the thought of stalling a bright red, open-top sports car on Lord Street is on a whole new level, and somehow terror began to permeate the leather lining 4/4’s cabin.
I managed to avoid that embarrassing fate, but somehow I felt that even if I hadn’t, nobody would have been bothered anyway. Van drivers honked their approval and pedestrians waved as whooshed by, on our way out to quieter roads. It’s clear I wasn’t the only one falling for the 4/4, but the countryside was calling.
Admittedly, the Morgan I’ve always wanted to drive is the Plus 8, which from its introduction in 1968 melded those molten good looks to the rorty sound of the Rover V8, an engine which for decades has scared small children when used in generations of British sports cars.
The 4/4’s Ford unit is a couple of rungs further down the ladder, but it still gives you a surprising stream of speed as it throbs and burbles beneath that long bonnet. Morgan don’t make it in this guise anymore but the 2009 twist on the formula, the 4/4 Sport, starts at around £26,000.
The sensation you get when you finally reach the first sweeping bend is about as far removed from tinbox motoring as you can imagine, but somehow it feels alive!
It’s the not the sort of machine you can master in a day, with its unique umbrella-style handbrake proving a particular challenge, but it’s all the more endearing for it, and a feature you’ll easily get used to.
In fact, the main challenge during my time at the wheel was the wheel itself; it’s a beautiful carving of the finest wood, but a little large for my liking. Not that you’ll mind too much, as the feel for the road it gives you is superbly communicative.
The same goes for the ride, which you’ll either love or hate. It’s firm and fidgety – though not uncomfortable – but it does at least let you know exactly what those pretty wire wheels are doing.
The 4/4’s not the sports car for everyone, but it is an experience in its own right, and well worth a try if you’re bored of Boxsters and tired of TVRS.
I love it, and I can’t say that about many 100-year-olds.
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