I was invited to a corporate event at the Morgan factory on Friday, so I thought I’d take the Lotus to visit it’s West country cousins.
Literally the moment I drove through the gates I got the air of specialness about the place, very ‘British’ but not in a contrived way more of a celebratory one. The guys working in the different workshops when spotting a Lotus pootling between the different halls stopped, looked and smiled, they clearly love cars and I sensed they understood the shared DNA in their midst.
I was early (due to an effort to miss the rush hour). I was offered a coffee (in a mug, very brand appropriate) and having sat down to play with the Blackberry for half an hour a man appeared and said “Would you like to drive a car?” Rude not to. He handed me the keys to the lightest V8 production car in the world, a circa 400bhp Plus 8. Bonkers, mainly the noise. I quickly put it in to flappy paddle mode to make sure it made the most noise. As a cousin to the Lotus it’s a bit tardy, rather like a noisy uncle that will try hopelessly chasing you across the pub garden. Very pointy, but was setup to understeer. I’d not met this side of the British car family before but within 20mins I understood them.
As we fitted in to the potential customer demographic we had a talk from the MD. At only 900 cars and £35m revenue a year it’s not big time and remains family owned, that just adds to their culture. The MD said people always say 3 things: wooden chassis, 8 year waiting list and Sir John Harvey-Jones. Only the latter is true (and led to the most orders they’ve ever had in a 48hr period), the wooden frame goes on the chassis to attach the body work to and it’s only a 6mth wait these days. He wanted us to take away the impression of their blend of modern and tradition, and this picture of a brand new car rather summed that up for me…
We headed off on a tour and bumped in to a cousin of Exige’s grandparent Elite, the venerable Plus 4 Plus. Made from the same stuff, both in sentiment and material, fibre glass. I think the East coast DNA has the looks from this generation, even though the Morgan is slightly more youthful.
The tour of the factory was enlightening. Yep, that’s leaf-spring suspension…
The Morgan family start early for Christmas, here they’ve wrapped some V8s as gifts to customers…
Once the ash wooden frame has gone on the hand rolled/beaten panels are attached…
How many cars are made with a spirit level these days?..
Whilst there Morgan kindly showed Exige how to make replacement wheel arch liners…
Then we went for lunch. That’s not an experience I will forget in one of these (I’d recommend glasses though!)…
It’s not how I’d spend £35k but a 2litre V-twin is a real experience; wheel-spins in third, not so much from the 115bhp of power more that there’s only a single driven wheel. It is a great way to revive their history in a modern form and now makes up half their production.
After lunch, well, why not try another V8…
They may be very different things but I think it’s clear to see the DNA remains between the two companies in they both possess good looking rumps…
A good day out!
- a most proper British product
