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problems involving large manufacturers to worry about checking out what
some small cheese has done to bring his private machine up to spec. And
he knew a guy in LA who imported and modified over 200 used Porsche 911
s from Europe before an NHTSA inspector came around. But Fink had one
immediately. The man stood on the front bumper and shook his head. "I
don't think they'll let this through in Washington," he said. Fink and Miller delivered the Morgan to Sacramento and built a second car for themselves. When it came to the front bumper, they decided on a crash test. After all, Owen had assured them. They took elaborate before photographs, spent some time calculating how to be sure the car was doing five mph and no more, and rolled it into the wall of Miller's shop. There was a sound of breaking glass. Miller's estimate for the repair was $1000. Next they tried a design based on a VW Rabbit bumper-which worked. Fink and Miller now put into operation the smallest recall program in history. They went to Sacramento and modified Kelly's car. The papers were filed with DOT. They had done it. They just needed certification, and they could start bringing the cars in. And then, about a week iater-it was now August of 1975-a man walked into Miller's shop. He introduced himself as Matt Lowe of the EPA's Mobile Source Enforcement squad. "I just came to tell you," he said, that we have decided not to allow the use of propane." Importing a gasoline-powered Plus 8 would now mean having to conduct a 50,000 mile test. "it's not that difficult to do really," someone at the EPA told him. "You can rent a test track and hire a driver." By Fink's calculations it would cost $100,000. He flew back to England to collect the Pinto-engined 4/4. This was now their only hope. It was, of course, still not finished. The delay was due to the Scottish company that manufactured the inertia-reel seatbelts. The salesman would not sell Morgan belts unless he could inspect the installation, and he didn't have time to get down from Carlysle to do the inspecting. So the car sat. It was also the consensus at Morgan that the Pinto engine wouldn't fit into the 4/4 chassis, so Fink had to supervise the installation himself. It was Christmas before he came home with the car. |
There he found a note from the EPA inadvertently stuffed in a drawer. It said that "Only 0.04 percent of all vehicles sold in the U.S. come from manufacturers who produce less than 2000 units per annum." They had seen the light; the little man was getting a break. Fink would no longer have to go through the 50,000-mile test. All he had to do was fill out a 75-page form, drive the car for 4000 miles over an approved test route (stopping every half-mile) and then have the car flown back to Ann Arbor, Michigan for the EPA to test at its own laboratories. With this, he could clear a family of engines. And on the heels of this discovery came news in the mail that private parties could certify individual vehicles. This involved a two-day, $500 test done at one of the private centers around the country. If for just one glorious moment your engine burns clean enough to pass, you may drive with it forever. And so the Morgan is back. Fink is the sole U.S. distributor with a quota of two cars a month, a Plus 8 and a 4/4 equipped with a 160Occ Cortina engine. To start with, both the Plus 8 and the 4/4 will be propane-powered, but by the end of this year Fink plans to have turbo-. charged the 4/4 and put it and a propane-powered Plus 8 through the 4000mile test. Why have Fink and Miller spent eight years chasing this? Is all that useless data, all that incredible DOT/EPA jargon stuffed into Fink's cortex now useless? Were these merely the compulsive throes of two men obsessed? "Partly that," says Fink. "Partly that," says Miller, "and partly the honesty of the car. They're good, simple things. I think anything that gets us back to basics is worth struggling for." But no, there are other thoughts too in Fink's clear-blue mind. Fink has no written contract with Peter Morgan. Morgan writes no contracts; a gentleman's word is as good as his bond. Fink is bound into Morgan in the only way, the familial way. Now he would like to recreate the demand for Morgans in the U.S. and then go to the factory in lovely Worcestershire and turn up the wick. Breathe life into it, expand it. Each year Fink coaches the Oxford eight from the launch. Fink was A Yank At Oxford. Now he'd like nothing more than to become The Yank At Malvern. |
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