A Morgan roadster is not so much a car as it is a time machine with headlights and a windshield. Unless you're a student of the brand, you might actually confuse a 2016 Morgan with one made in 1936. Yes, this is a car with some serious history. And as I saddled up a brand new Morgan Plus 4, I was struck by a strange sense of déjà vu.
I looked out over the long, handmade hood with the sense that I was reliving some previous moment in vivid and precise detail. The fenders stretched out ahead, curved metal wings that framed the road.
The leather-lined driver's compartment cocooned around me like the cockpit of a Battle of Britain fighter plane.
Then I remembered my encounters with Morgans. The first was in Brussels, Belgium, where I went to high school. A friend's dad rolled back the wooden door of a moss-covered garage and flicked on the light to reveal a tiny, low-slung car painted in British racing green with polished wire wheels.
It was the sports car incarnate. We went for a ride that branded itself on my memory forever – a rush of speed, wind and beautiful exhaust-pipe music.
Years later, after I became a professional mechanic, I was enlisted by a friend who needed help with a 1950s Morgan he'd recently picked up. "It just needs a few tweaks," he assured me. "You'll be able to do it in a morning." Famous last words.
When I opened the door of my friend's Morgan, it came off in my hands. The hinges were mounted in a sub-frame carved from hardwood, and termites had taken up permanent residence. And that was only the beginning. I worked on the car on and off for six months, a process that involved carpentry, mechanical repair, a touch of sorcery (the Morgan's wiring seemed to be inhabited by demons), and some outright blacksmithing – I straightened a bent steel frame section by heating it with an acetylene torch while simultaneously pulling in it with a Come-Along winch that's normally used to haul heavy machinery or extract stuck Jeeps from mud bogs.
I loved the Morgan nonetheless.
It had an ambience that defied description. At the end of each repair session, I stood at the side of the garage and stared at the car, savouring its timeless appeal. It was an existential experience: The Morgan was trying to return to the earth; I was trying to keep it from the grave. I soon realized that dealing with an old Morgan is like caring for an aging relative with a lingering, irreversible illness – no matter your skills, Mother Nature will have the final word.
Decades later, I went to the Morgan factory in Malvern, England. It was the coolest, most resonant industrial operation I have ever encountered.
Peter Cheney tours the Morgan plant in Malvern, England, where they have been hand-crafting cars since 1909.
2:20
There were no robots, and no assembly line. Instead, teams of skilled artisans built the cars by hand. I watched in amazement as a craftsman made a hood by feeding a sheet of steel through a pair of rollers, then trimming it with shears. The factory was a collection of brick buildings, and workers rolled the partially completed cars between them.
The office of Peter Morgan, the son of the company's founder, was preserved exactly as it had been on the day he died in 2003, frozen in amber.
There are less than 200 employees at Morgan, and they only build about 500 cars per year. You can't buy a new one in Canada, because Morgan doesn't have the resources to meet our current automotive regulations, which stipulate features like electronic stability control, back-up cameras and crush zones.
Never mind. Driving a new Morgan is an experience. Although they all look the same, the company actually builds two very different kinds of cars. One is the classic series, which maintains a set of mechanical traditions that reach back to the 1930s – a steel ladder frame, sliding-pillar front suspension and a four-cylinder engine. The classic Morgans have been updated, but only slightly. The ignition system is now solid-state, which is good news. Back in the day, Morgan electrics were made by the British firm Lucas, which gained infamy for flakey components and unpredictable failures (enthusiasts took to calling the firm "Lucas, Prince of Darkness"). The traditional carburetors are also gone, exorcised in favour of digital fuel injection, a mechanical concession that reminds me of putting modern faucets in the bathroom of an Edwardian country estate.
The classic Morgan appeals to a particular constituency, dominated by older men who view the car through the sepia-tinted lens of memory. The classics are beautiful, but the company also offers the stunning Plus 8. Visually, the Plus 8 looks very similar to the car I drove back in high school. But under the skin, it's a high-tech machine, with a BMW V-8 engine and a bonded aluminum chassis worthy of a Formula One car. Classic Morgans flex like wooden sailing ships. Not the Plus 8 – it has the structural stiffness of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Out on the road, a Plus 8 roadster provides an incredible experience. It has Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang period ambience, but it's a true supercar, with stunning acceleration, powerful brakes and world-class handling. It sits low. It rumbles. It reminds you of a bygone age, even though its technology is here and now. That's Morgan – the car that time forgot.