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Driving Back To the Future The retro exterior of the new Morgan conceals a radical new machine One of the oddities of the Morgan sports car is that if you had an accident in one, you'd have to call out a carpenter. Well, maybe not a carpenter, but you'd certainly have to find a garage that could fix a car body crafted from ash
The ash body frame is part of the mystique of the classic Morgan 4/4, whose style has not changed since 1936 and whose shape is so idiosyncratic that it is the only car in the world with patents on its design. On the edge of the Malvern Hills where Edward Elgar composed such quintessentially English music as Land of Hope and Glory, the Morgan family runs a uniquely English company dedicated to creating very fast sports cars: the classic 4/4 and four liter V8 engine Plus 8 models on which the Morgan company made its reputation, and the retro-looking but all-new two-seater Aero 8, a stunningly beautiful machine that can reach a top speed of 260 km/h. The sleek Aero 8, filled with modern technology but based on an ash body, is put together in a new production shop. The classic Morgans, though, are still built in the adjacent 80-year-old factory, where production line means rolling the chassis gently downhill through a series of workshops for craftsmen to add their components. Though the steel sheets for the body are laser cut these days, metalworkers still cut the bonnet by hand and punch out the distinctive louvers individually. If the finished bonnet doesn't curve to a perfect fit, they roll it over an old log to get it just right. Charles Morgan, managing director and grandson of the founder, is happy with the way they do things — he's more concerned with what comes out at the end. "Other cars are built to price," he says. "Ours are built to last." Morgans inspire passion. Quentin English, who has owned three, says, "It is more than a car, it is part of British tradition." Each vehicle is made to a client's specifications — they can choose from 34,000 body colors and an equally vast palette for the interior leather. Like other customers English is tickled by the fact that when he orders a new car, "It goes through the factory with my name on the ticket." That personal touch is so attractive that future owners often visit the factory to watch their car being made. The process takes 18 days from start to finish. That's because the company's 150 workers can complete only 12 cars a week. Not surprisingly there is a long waiting list, up to three years for the classic models, though Morgan aims to increase production enough to bring that down to two, and 18 months for the Aero 8. But producing large numbers of cars has never been a priority at Morgan. When Sir John Harvey-Jones,
the former chairman of I.C.I., visited the Malvern plant
in 1989 for a BBC TV program, his brief was to advise the company on how
it could improve its manufacturing process and financial position. He
told the Morgans to change virtually everything, install modern manufacturing
methods and double production. But that was not the Morgan style. "What
he suggested," says Charles Morgan, "would have been throwing the baby
out with the bathwater."
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Summer
Journey
is on newsstands now |
