The waiting list

The Plus 8 had barely gone on sale when America, which had been taking most of Morgan’s cars, changed its rules. For the next thirty years Morgan went on building a 1930’s design for a market that kept trying to regulate it out of existence, and owners happily waited their turn to buy one. I was one of them!

The Registry shows what happened. Of its cars built from 1950 to 1968, 72% are in the United States. Of those built from 1969 to 1999, 22% are.

1969–1973America closes

The United States brought in emissions controls in 1969, and Morgan’s American market all but died. Simanaitis Says The Plus 8 had gained American type approval in 1970, but by 1971 the regulations had ended Morgan’s large American trade. Unsigned company history, Wikipedia

Road & Track’s December 1969 report caught that uncertainty as it happened. Its test car belonged to Scott McMillan, who had brought it into the United States through Canada. The magazine reported that Morgan hoped to return in 1970 with a “detoxed” Rover engine and cars meeting federal standards. It had asked U.S. Customs about the official position on nonconforming cars, and hoped to report more. Road & Track, December 1969

Mine came in just as the door was swinging shut. It was shipped in May 1971, sent to New Orleans instead of Mobile (two extra weeks!), and finally arrived in Mobile on a freighter loaded with pipe—I could see my Morgan coming in delicately balanced on top of a vast pyramid of drain pipes! The windscreen, top and both seats were packed in the back, so my first drive was made sitting on a cardboard box, trying to get it out of first gear, where it had frozen on the trip over… The whole tale is in my Saga.

1968–1992Propane, from San Francisco

Bill Fink had founded Isis Imports in San Francisco in 1968, on Eddy Street. He named it after the River Isis at Oxford, for his love of rowing. Simanaitis Says

His way back in was fuel—of all things! After long discussions with the federal authorities and a great deal of paperwork, he won approval in 1974 to convert new Plus 8s to run on propane, which made them legal to import. Each car also needed different bumpers, reinforced doors, padded sun visors, inertia seat belts and a taller windscreen. Simanaitis Says The conversions went on until 1992, and 98% of the Morgans imported that way were Plus 8s. Wikipedia According to the Registry timeline, Morgan then sold fully compliant cars in America, without conversion, from 1992 to 1996.

The Registry holds 120 Plus 8s built between 1974 and 1992 that are in the United States today. See them.

Fink’s own account, written with Lorne Goldman of GoMoG, adds the detail. The 5 mph impact rule meant bumpers on gas shock absorbers, set 15 inches up, which pushed the front turn signals onto the bumper. Fink put them under it, and so did Chris Charles, the Canadian agent. Winn Staples of Cantab put them on top, and that is still an easy way to tell which dealer first brought a US Morgan in. GoMoG, Made in the U.S.A. The gasoline Plus 8s that Cantab began bringing in from 1986 had their compression cut from 9.75:1 to 8.15:1, by the Rover manual’s account, and could make as little as 135 bhp. GoMoG, Made in the U.S.A. Canada needed no change to the engine, only to the body and the safety equipment. GoMoG, Made in the U.S.A.

Isis later moved to Pier 33, by Fisherman’s Wharf, and opened a second site in Bodega. Simanaitis Says I visited in 1996, and tucked way back in the back of one of the piers was one of the neatest gatherings of cars I had seen in a long time! On the East Coast, the Fergus business had been the great Morgan importer of the 1950’s and 1960’s; Joe Ferguson, who ran it, died in Alabama in 1995. Ferguson Club

1968–1999The V8 years

The Plus 8 carried the company. It went through four gearboxes: the Moss four-speed it was born with, Rover’s four-speed from 1972, Rover’s five-speed LT77, and from the mid-1990’s the R380, with a remote linkage made for Morgan. Wikipedia, Braunstein chart, v139 The engine gained fuel injection in 1984, grew to 3.9 litres in 1990, and to 4.6 litres in 1996 or 1997. Unsigned company history, Braunstein chart, v139, Hagerty, Plus 8 guide

Braunstein’s chart gives each stage its figures, and its chassis numbers for the gearbox changes: Braunstein chart, v139

1968

3.5-litre Rover V8 with the Moss four-speed gearbox: 10.5:1 compression, about 155 bhp

R7475

Rover four-speed gearbox from here (the last Moss box is R7494), with 9.25:1 compression

R8151

Rover five-speed gearbox from here, with 9.35:1 compression

c. 1976

Body 4 inches wider

c. 1981–1985

3.5-litre with dual Strombergs

c. 1982

Rack-and-pinion steering

c. 1984

SD1 3.5-litre “Flapper” fuel injection: about 204 bhp

c. 1990–2000

3.9-litre “Hotwire”: about 190 bhp, with the R380 gearbox from about 1994

c. 1996–2000

4.6-litre “Hotwire”: 335 cars, about 215 bhp

c. 1996–2004

4.0-litre GEMS: about 190 bhp

Lorne Goldman’s account of the Plus 8’s power gives the figures year by year. An unmodified 4/4 of the time made about 75 bhp, and the first Plus 8s, from 1968 to 1972, made 160.5. GoMoG, Plus 8 power

January 1974

Compression lowered in stages for the first European emissions rules: 143 bhp

End of 1976

The Rover SD1 engine: 12 bhp more, and much more reliable

1982

Strombergs replace the SUs; power holds at 155 bhp

September 1984

The Vitesse fuel-injected engine, as an option: 205 bhp, 0 to 60 in 5.15 seconds. Only a limited number, until early 1985

1985–1990

Catalytic converters and a single exhaust: 190 bhp falling to 162. Every Plus 8 injected after January 1987

June 1990

Re-bored from 3,538 to 3,946 cc: back to near 1985’s figure. 0 to 60 in 6.1 seconds by Autocar’s test of May 1991

Goldman doubts the factory’s own figures after that, by his own dyno tests: 190.3 bhp for the 3.9 against the 185 it published, and for the 4.6 about 218 bhp from Land Rover against the 194.4 the dealers gave. GoMoG, Plus 8 power

GoMoG has a list of the Plus 8’s fuelling by chassis number. The factory never took up a supplier’s change until regulations forced it, so a Plus 8 often has not got what Rover or Land Rover fitted in its year. GoMoG, Plus 8 confusion His page on it (opens in a new tab) explains why they differ so much.

R7001–R7715

1968–73: SU carburettors

R7716–R9066

1973–81: a later SU carburettor

R9067 on

1981–87: Strombergs

1984–87

Fuel injection as an option (the “Flapper”); standard from 1987 to 1990

1990–2000

“Hotwire” injection in the UK and Europe

1998–2000

Morgan’s own GEMS map for the US and Australia

2000–04

Land Rover’s GEMS on every car

From 1997 to 2000 the factory built two kinds side by side: the older 3.9 with Hotwire for the UK, and the 4.0 with GEMS for export. GoMoG, 4.0 difference The steering changed in these years too. A rack-and-pinion box made for Morgan by Jack Knight was first fitted to the Plus 8 in 1983, optional with fuel injection until it became standard in 1987. The 4/4 and Plus 4 kept a Cam Gears box until a Gemmer box, made for Morgan, replaced it in 1986. GoMoG, steering systems

One thing it never got from the factory was a radio. When I ordered mine I asked Mr Day, Peter Morgan’s vice-president, to please fit an AM/FM radio. By return mail he replied that they would be happy to supply the car as ordered, with the exception of the radio: Mr Morgan felt that a true sports car driver should be listening to the music of the engine, not of a radio! I have never once considered putting one in since.

In 1975 Motor Sport’s Bill Boddy found 100 to 105 operatives building eight to ten cars a week, three or four of them Plus 8s, aiming at 400 to 450 cars a year, and 65% were exported. A Plus 8 cost £2,925 and a two-seater “Plus-4” £2,094. Motor Sport, June 1975 The factory’s own list of 18 October 1976 priced the Plus 8 at £3,750 before tax and £4,387.50 with car tax and VAT, and the 4/4 two-seater at £2,685 and £3,141.45. Factory price lists, via GoMoG (He must have meant the 4/4: the same article says the Plus 8 and the 4/4 were the only cars Malvern was making, and the Plus 4 did not come back until 1985.) I had been there myself three years before, in 1972, and it was akin to going to Nirvana! I was given free rein to wander about all day, everyone was happy, kind and interested in my questions, and Peter Morgan was as nice and polite as everyone said. The shop looked just as it had for forty years, with dark open timbers and old posters on the walls. It was one of the best days I have ever had!

The Plus 4 came back in 1985 with a Fiat engine, and with a Rover engine from 1987 or 1988. Classic & Sports Car, Morgan, History (2022) The Registry holds 1,086 Plus 8s built in these thirty years. See them.

The smaller cars had their own steps. By the chart the 4/4 went from the Ford 1600 GT of about 90 bhp to the 1600 CVH at about 80, then the fuel-injected CVH at about 100, and in the 1990’s to the 1.8-litre Zetec of about 120 bhp, whose later cars are known as Silver Top and, from 2002, Black Top. Fiat’s 1,600 cc engine of about 99 bhp ran from about 1981 to about 1984. In the 1980’s the narrow 4/4 body gave way to the wide Plus 8 body, four inches wider, about 1990 to 1992, and servo brakes became standard; coloured wing beading became available about 1981. The Plus 4 had about 120 bhp from Fiat, about 138 from Rover’s M16 and about 135 from its T16. Braunstein chart, v139

1951–2015The owners take over

Morgan owners are a sociable lot! The Morgan Sports Car Club began on 30 June 1951, when a group of owners met at Ye Olde Flying Horse in Kegworth. At a second meeting there on 21 July they founded the Morgan 4/4 Club. Its first event, a road rally, followed on 5 August, and its first magazine that November: seventeen typed pages. It took its present name in January 1971. Sports Car Club

The gatherings grew with the cars. Over 300 Morgans came to Prescott on 6 and 7 June 1970 for sixty years of Morgan. The club’s first national event, in 1976, marked forty years of four-wheelers. The first event called MOG was at Ragley Hall on 8 May 1977, and there has been one every year since. Sports Car Club For the 75th anniversary in 1984, over 1,200 Morgans gathered at Eastnor Castle. Unsigned company history In 1995 the Three Wheeler Club’s fiftieth anniversary drew about 200 three-wheelers. Three Wheeler Club

More of the MOGs, from the club’s own list: Sports Car Club

1980

“70 years of Morgan” at Beaulieu and Goodwood: the first event run jointly by the three- and four-wheeler clubs

1986

Fifty years of four-wheelers at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern

1991

Forty years of the club and of the Plus Four, back at the Three Counties

1994

York racecourse, with nearly a thousand Morgans

1998

Manx-MOG on the Isle of Man (250 cars), and Hal-MOG at Stansted for thirty years of the Plus 8

2000

At Canterbury, the first MOG for the Aero 8

2001

The golden jubilee at Cheltenham racecourse

Across the Atlantic, the Southern California club’s “Morgans on the Lawn” began in 1978 on the front lawn of a member’s house in Fullerton. By 1980 it had 99 Morgans at Cal State Fullerton, and in 1981 Peter Morgan came as guest of honour to see a record 107, signing autographs and pointing out a drive shaft that had been put in backwards. Plus 4 Club of Southern California In August 1999 he came to California for the 90th anniversary: a gala evening in Santa Monica on 24 August, and a banquet at Monterey on 27 August for 185 enthusiasts and 25 Morgans. Plus 4 Club of Southern California

Then the owners went online. The first English-language Morgan forum, morgans@autox.com in the United States, began in 1995, and the MSCCdg followed in the UK in 2000. GoMoG, the eMog Pub In early January 2001 both collapsed almost together, for different reasons. At the request of his friend the late Ed Herman, Lorne Goldman started the eMog Pub, a forum with a pub theme to head off the guru-ism of the others, and opened it to the public on 27 January 2001. It ran by email or on the web. Lorne Goldman, note on eMog By 2011 it had 2,000 members, 22 of them from the factory, and by its founder’s account the factory adopted several of its conclusions, among them rustless kingpins, steering races and the end of the one-shot oiler. GoMoG, the eMog Pub Lorne says the average day brought 75 posts, and the busiest, with 327, was the day Peter Morgan’s death was announced. He closed the pub on 18 May 2011, as he remembers, because it had exhausted him and he saw the community dividing again. Lorne Goldman, note on eMog

Some of us keep our cars a very long time. By the panel’s 2019 update, the longest ownership of a new four-wheeler belongs to Arthur Beatty of Uxbridge, Ontario, in his 60th year with his 1957 Plus 4, chassis 3684 in the Registry, which he still drove daily in season. Ken Hill gave the longest of any Morgan as Gerald Carr’s three-wheeler: an F2 bought in 1937 and kept almost sixty years. GoMoG Experts Panel, longest ownership

The records had keepers too. Jake Alderson, an anaesthetist in Sheffield, has researched the three-wheelers and the pre-1970 cars since 1971. John Worrall, a former chairman of the Morgan Sports Car Club and a concours judge since 1987, wrote Original Morgan. Gerry Willburn has owned over twenty Morgans since 1959, and has a library of Morgan history assembled over forty years. All three sat on GoMoG’s Experts Panel. GoMoG, Experts Panel The older cars have a register of their own now: in July 2015 Machiel Kalf called a meeting at the Morgan Visitor Centre in Malvern, and the Morgan Historic Register began for four-wheelers fitted with one or more carburettors. By October 2022 it held records of over 1,200 cars from 27 countries. Morgan Historic Register

Over here, my own Morgan took first place in the Import Division at the Custom and Sports Car Show in 1980 (one of the Duke boys from The Dukes of Hazzard was there and talked with me about it!), and in 1993 it received the Mayor’s Choice Award out of 135 entries. I prefer to enjoy it as a driving car rather than a museum piece, though…

1972–1996Racing

Robin Gray won the Fred Dixon Modsports Championship in a Plus 8 in 1972, and in 1975 Chris Alford, a Hertfordshire garage’s sales manager, won the BRSCC production sports car title in a 4/4: fifteen wins in fifteen starts, with a 1,600 cc Ford engine of 102 horsepower! John Britten’s Plus 8 took two outright wins in the same series. Motor Sport, January 1976, Morgan, History (2022) In 1978 MMC 11, the first production Plus 8 that Autocar tested, won the BRDC production sports car championship with nine wins in twelve races, and it took the BRSCC title in 1979. Charles Morgan, the founder’s grandson, and Rob Wells drove it, though the timeline does not say which of them drove in which year. From 1980 to 1982 Morgans covered the greatest distance by a single-car entry in the Willhire 24 Hours at Snetterton. Unsigned company history

In 1987 a one-make championship began for owners racing their own cars. And in 1996 Charles Morgan and the dealer Bill Wykeham raced an aluminium-chassis Plus 8 in seven rounds of the BPR series, which became the FIA GT championship. It proved the factory could build a race car, and that the old shape was the limit at that level. Unsigned company history

Morgans kept going to far places, too. In 1993 Bruce Stapleton, the London dealer, and Doug Morris drove a Plus 8 in the London–Sydney Marathon, a month-long rally of 44 stages across Europe, Asia and Australia, and finished 38th. Wikipedia: 1993 London–Sydney Morgan’s own history says Stapleton drove an early Plus 8 “12,000 mile” to Australia and set the fastest time on a number of stages. Morgan, History (2022)

1990Troubleshooter

In 1990 the industrialist Sir John Harvey-Jones brought the BBC’s Troubleshooter to the works. The waiting list for a new Morgan, by the Registry timeline’s account, was around a decade. His advice was to modernise and make more cars. The family declined: the old methods were the appeal, and a waiting list carried a small company through recessions. Wikipedia

And what happened? The programme brought in hundreds of orders, which the company history says made the waiting list longer still! Unsigned company history Harvey-Jones later said he was pleased to have been proved wrong. Wikipedia A report from June 1990 has the chairman, Peter Morgan, saying of Harvey-Jones that “with us, he was out of his depth.” The firm was then making about 430 cars a year, and orders had tripled since the broadcast. Christian Science Monitor, 1990

It was the sixth and last programme of the first series, which the BBC began broadcasting on Tuesday 27 March 1990. Wikipedia: Troubleshooter The series went out weekly on Tuesday nights: The Times previewed the Copella programme on the evening of Tuesday 3 April and, on 18 April, reviewed “last night’s” Shropshire Health Authority programme, the fourth. That puts the sixth, Morgan, on Tuesday 1 May 1990, the date in the Registry timeline, though I have not yet found the listing for that night. The Times, March–April 1990

1985–1999Eleven a week

Charles Morgan, who had spent about ten years as a news cameraman for ITN, joined the company full time in 1985. Wikipedia In 1997 the range was overhauled: aluminium wings formed by the Superform process, longer doors, a new dashboard to take airbags, the 4.6-litre V8, and a new paint shop using water-based paint. Unsigned company history

From February 1999 the works built eleven cars a week, more than in any year since before the Second World War, and about half went abroad. Unsigned company history That year Peter Morgan turned eighty and retired, staying on as chairman, and his son took over the running of the company. Wikipedia

Around 1998 I became acquainted with Lorne Goldman, who had started the Gomog site, still the bible for detailed information about Morgans, and that same year I began Morganville. It has listed over 5,000 Morgans since… and you are reading it now!