Morgan Cars, Sales, Imports, Isis Imports Ltd.

Main picture: a 1968 Morgan 4/4 with a Ford 1600 engine. Based on the original 4/4 produced in 1935 the model was revived in 1955 with Ford power units. The 1600 was the last of this line. Above: dashboard details of the four-seater Flat Nose Plus-Four. Left: a 1976 Plus-Eight which has a Rover V-8 engine, and Rover manual gearbox. The most modern Morgan, it still incorporates traditional lines and with a top speed of 124 mph is the fastest machine ever produced by the company. Below: a 1977 Plus-Eight, standard but for its wheels. Despite several attempts to produce modern-styled Morgans - including an Elite-like body on a Plus-Four chassis - the demand for the thirties-style original look has never palled and the company has even manufactured its own replica of the Morgan Plus-Four which won the Le Mans two-litre class in 1962: the 1963 Plus-Four 120 bhp 'Super Sports'.

in England, and for motorists that implied Brooklands, Donington, long duration road rallies and mud trials. The new Morgan model was suited to all these activities but especially the last-named. This storming of long, uptilted, slimy gradients was a popular pastime of the plus-four-suited men and their short-skirted flapper girlfriends. It had become the preserve of MG, Singer and similar small sports cars and now Morgan joined in. The new Morgan four-wheeler made its debut, so far as a Motor Show was concerned, on stand number 86 in the Grand Hall of Olympia, just over 40 years ago. It was designated the '4/4', to indicate that it had four wheels and a four-cylinder engine. The Morgan three-wheeler market was fast fizzling out. But some were still being made, so it was important to emphasise the difference. This new car had a very low chassis frame, composed of unusual Z-section side members spaced by tubes and stiffened by uniting the lower flanges with a plywood floor. This floor formed the lowest part of the 4/4, a smooth underbelly. The side members were cut away to allow the back axle to clear them and this axle was sprung on the underslung half-elliptic leaf springs that passed beneath it. At the front of the chassis the crude but effective form of coil-spring independent suspension which Morgan had pioneered for the first of his three-wheelers was adapted to the four-wheeler. It was an improved, or perhaps I should say modified, version, cheap to make, and understood by the inmates of the Malvern manufactory. Morgan, along with Sizaire-Naudin and later Lancia with the Lambda, had been early in the field with independent front springing, whereby each wheel moves up

	Main picture: a 1968 Morgan 4/4 with a Ford 1600 engine. Based on the original 4/4 produced in 1935 the model was revived in 1955 with Ford power units. The 1600 was the last of this line. Above: dashboard details of the four-seater Flat Nose Plus-Four. Left: a 1976 Plus-Eight which has a Rover V-8 engine, and Rover manual gearbox. The most modern Morgan, it still incorporates traditional lines and with a top speed of 124 mph is the fastest machine ever produced by the company. Below: a 1977 Plus-Eight, standard but for its wheels. Despite several attempts to produce modern-styled Morgans - including an Elite-like body on a Plus-Four chassis - the demand for the thirties-style original look has never palled and the company has even manufactured its own replica of the Morgan Plus-Four which won the Le Mans two-litre class in 1962: the 1963 Plus-Four 120 bhp 'Super Sports'.