The 10 best Morgan road cars

Morgan Runabout – 1909

Where else could we start but at the beginning? Morgan’s founder, Henry Fredrick Stanley Morgan, or HFS Morgan for short, was born in August 1881. The son of a church curate, HFS studied to become an engineer and, after doing an apprenticeship with railway engineers William Dean and George Jackson of GWR. He then set up a car garage in Malvern in 1905. Servicing and selling Wolseleys, Siddeleys, Rovers and Darracqs, with his new business partner Leslie Bacon, another former railway apprentice. The duo would create the three-wheeled Morgan Runabout.

The Morgan Runabout prototype was built in 1909 before production started in 1910 – a three-wheeler with a tubular steel chassis and a 7PS (5kW) Peugeot V-twin engine. Although steered with a tiller it was relatively stable, owing to the fact the single wheel was at the rear, relatively inexpensive and had a power to weigh ratio of 90 horsepower per tonne. Leslie Bacon pulled out of the partnership before production started, but that didn’t stop HFS – the prototype Runabout had got the ball rolling…

Morgan Cyclecar Grand Prix – 1913

As the Runabout proved something of a hit, HFS started to look at other types of vehicle. One such was the ‘Cyclecar’, essentially a further developed Runabout but with luxuries like bodywork, a steering wheel and even a two-speed gearbox (in Morgan’s own words the speeds were “fast and very fast”).

Having secured 10 British and world records for cyclecars by 1913, as well as 24 gold medals in various reliability trials, the editor of “Cyclecar” magazine W.G. McMinnies won the International Cyclecar Grand Prix at Amiens in France. His success, and subsequent column inches, gave Morgan a lot of publicity, and to celebrate the Cyclecar Grand Prix was created.

Motorsport might not have featured in Morgan’s history in quite the same way as it has for, say, Ferrari, but it has been a part of the company’s history more or less ever since.

Morgan 4/4 – 1936

In 1913 Morgan had established a new, additional workshop in Malvern on some farmland on Pickersleigh Road. Once the war had finished that new site was expanded, Morgan went about doing what Morgan did best: setting records. At Brooklands, for example, Morgans were required to start a lap down from other vehicles in the same class because they were just too fast. In short, wherever Morgans competed they found success, and that success allowed the company to invest not just in expanding the business premises but growing the model range.

In 1936 the Morgan 4/4 was created, so called because it had four wheels and four cylinders. Shown at exhibitions in London and France, it was the first Morgan to use the steel chassis that was used right up, albeit with tweaks along the way, until 2020. The two-seat 4/4 Roadster was followed by a four-seater, and then in 1938 the 4/4 Drophead Coupe was born. With sales of the three-wheeled machines in decline, it was the 4/4 that propelled Morgan forward into a new age of car production.

Morgan Plus 4 TOK 258 – 1962

It wasn’t all about world records for Morgan. The company had a reputation for longevity and reliability, so what better race to enter that the Le Mans 24 Hours?

The first Morgan to compete at Le Mans was that of a 25-year-old novice called Prudence Fawcett. In 1938 she entered a works-prepared and tuned 4/4 together with co-driver Geoff White, and the duo didn’t just finish but came home in 13^th place overall.

Fast forward 24 years to 1962 and there was another Morgan at La Sarthe, this time a Plus 4 Super Sports, the ‘Plus’ denoting a healthy power jump over the standard 4. At the hands of Lawrence and Richard Sheppard-Baron, the Plus 4 ‘TOK 258’ covered 2,261 miles at an average speed of 94mph, enough to secure an astonishing 2.0-litre class win and, again, 13^th overall. As if that wasn’t enough of a reliability triumph (37 of the 55 entries failed to finish), the car was then driven back to the UK on public roads.

Morgan Plus 4 Plus – 1963

The Morgan Plus 4 Plus? Surely that’s a subbing error? Actually no, it isn’t. The Plus 4 Plus, as strange as the name might seem, was something quite different for Morgan. Put simply, Morgan took a Plus 4 chassis and draped it in a new fibreglass body, built by E.B. Plastics Ltd. in Stoke-on-Trent. The result was a car that weighed just 816kg.

Announced initially at the 1963 Earls Court Motor Show, the car was not a commercial success, with only 26 built in a four-year period. But if you don’t experiment with fresh ideas you never learn anything new, and to our eyes it’s quite a cool creation.

Morgan Plus 8 – 1968

The Plus 4 was introduced in 1950, and while popular and fast, by the mid-1960s it was starting to get a tad long in the tooth, a little samey. The Triumph TR engine that powered it was also nearing the end of its life. Thankfully some clever spark had the idea of squeezing a 3.5-litre Rover V8 into a Plus 4 chassis, creating the new Plus 8.

Introduced in 1968 the Plus 8 weighed 900kg, and while the Rover unit wasn’t the most sophisticated, or the most powerful, engine around, it certainly gave more grunt. The Plus 8 became a staple of the Morgan range, and, with various tweaks, it remained in production until 2004. That’s right, the Plus 4 and its V8 engine was sold non-stop for 36 years.

Morgan Aero 8 – 2000

To be clear, Morgans do not, nor have they ever had, wooden chassis. From the 4/4 in 1936 right up to the final, ‘old’ Plus 4 in 2020, Morgan used a steel chassis onto which a wooden frame was then attached, with the body bonded on after that. Steel, however, is a heavy material, and having experimented with an aluminium chassis race car in the 1996 BPR series and ’97 FIA GT series, Morgan pressed ahead with designing a new car with an aluminium backbone. That car was the Aero 8.

Launched at the 2000 Geneva Motor Show, the Aero 8. With its slightly cross-eyed look (a look which gave aero advantage, said Morgan), the Aero 8 was the brainchild of Charles Morgan and engineer Chris Lawrence, the same man who’d driven TOK 258 to a class win at Le Mans in 1962. It had an aluminium tub, a wooden frame and aluminium body panels, and a positively raucous 4.4-litre BMW V8 engine. Production ran until 2018, not without a few fun variations…

Morgan Aeromax – 2005

One such variation was this, the Morgan Aeromax. The Aeromax was first seen at the Geneva Motor Show in 2005, then a one-off for a single customer, but the design proved so popular that, with permission from the original client, Morgan announced it would put 100 cars into production.

With a swooping, fixed aluminium roof and a split rear screen, as well as a number of other changes to the bodywork and the interior, the design was the first work of a then 21-year-old engineering graduate called Matthew Humphries. Underneath, of course, it had BMW V8 power, with 380PS (279kW) compared to the Aero 8’s 325PS (239kW). If you see one on the road today, consider yourself very lucky indeed.

Morgan 3 Wheeler – 2012

You’d have to be mad to build a car with three wheels in the 21^st Century, right? Well sometimes it’s good to be a little bit left-of-centre.

Having started off with three-wheelers before the First World War, Morgan revived the 3 Wheeler in 2011. With a 2.0-litre, S&S V-Twin engine with 69PS (51kW) – it had 83PS (61kW) at launch, until more recent emission regulations sucked away some of the power – stuck on at the front, a Mazda five-speed manual gearbox and rear-wheel-drive, not to mention a dry weight of only 585kg, the bonkers little machine can get to 0-62mph in just seven seconds. Perhaps the best feature is the starter button, hidden under a safety catch and styled to look like a bomb release button on a World War Two bomber. Production ends in 2021, so if you want one you’ll need to get one quick.

Morgan Plus Six – 2019

The Plus Six was revived for 2019, and like the Aeromax and Aero 8, it uses an aluminium chassis. This one is different, however. The new Plus Six uses the all-new CX-Generation bonded aluminium chassis, which isn’t just lighter than the old Plus 6 chassis, says Morgan, but twice as rigid too. What’s more, while the looks aren’t too dissimilar from previous Morgans, and the aluminium chassis is covered with an Ash frame and aluminium bodywork, the mechanicals are much more modern. Lift the bonnet and you’ll find the same BMW 3.0-litre, twin-turbo straight-six as the Z4 and Toyota Supra, as well as the same eight-speed automatic gearbox. The difference is that the Plus Six weighs 1,075kg, around 400kg less than both the Z4 and Supra – oh and it doesn’t have traction control...

Prices start at just under £85,000, which is considerably more than its German or Japanese cousins. But do you make up the difference with the experience? Oh absolutely.