Morgan Cars, Sales, Imports, Isis Imports Ltd.

Reprinted from Road and Track Magazine August 1980

Profile:

PETER
MORGAN
A traditionalist
. . . and a survivor

BY DOUG NYE

PHOTO BY GEOFFREY GODDARD

PETER MORGAN MAKES no bones about it: "If it hadn't been for the American market the Morgan Motor Co would not have survived the difficult years in the early Sixties. I mean it when I say it's sad we're not in the U.S. today after the help they gave us when the going was tough here at home and in Europe. Without them we would have been down to producing about two cars a week-and I'm not at all sure we could have survived at that; being down to five cars a week was bad enough."

Since that time the evergreen Morgan sports car has gained ground rather than lost it. In an age when nostalgia and the old values of open-air sports car motoring seem so attractive, the flaring-fender traditional Moggie has the extra clout of being the real thing, not just another replicar. But at the time, 1961-1962, things looked black, and Peter had not long been in control.

We reached absolute rock bottom at five cars per week because there was a recession in the California aircraft industry. Rene Pelandini in LA couldn't take a car off me for about 11 months, he seemed to have about 80 in stock and he'd previously been good for 10 a month. It was the east coast market which just about saved the day, and I was in LA surveying the problem when I got a call from home because they'd had a cable from New York saying to cancel cars. I could only say, on the spur of the moment, 'Don't worry, I'll be there in a day or two, just tell them they've been shipped,' and they did take the cars, sales recovered and we kept going. It was a worrying time, our worst, in fact."

That worst time for the Morgan Motor Co came very early in Peter Morgan's management of the concern. Born on November 3, 1919, he had grown up with the cars, first 3-wheelers, then four, and after spending the war years in Africa he started work in the factory at Malvern in February 1947. George Goodall retired from running the firm in 1958 and Peter's father, H.F.S., said, "Come on, let's see how you do as Managing Director." The Morgans, father and son, enjoyed an all-too-short year together before H.F.S. died in June 1959. Peter was on his own. His relationship with his father had been very close, more like younger brother than son, he says. "We were tremendously close, we got on marvelously well. I used to co-drive with him on trials and rallies prewar. When I first started here as a draftsman I wanted to design a new body for the car. Working on my own I built a 14-in. model and did drawings of a new 2-seater which I brought into this office to show him, and he said, 'Yes, that's all right, but now go away and do the 4-seater.' Of course, he knew it would be virtually impossible to do a really good-looking modern 4-seater body on the Morgan chassis, and that's very important to us because remember we were always scratching to sell cars and he figured most people wanted 4-seaters.

"H.F.S. always said he had had a lot of luck but he was a very shrewd man-not only a good practical engineer and designer but also a good businessman. He loved functional things and was a superb sketcher, had a superb grasp of line at a time when bodybuilding was an art. Occasionally the engineer in him triumphed over the artist. He was so keen on making things as simple as could be that he just stuck the headlights straight onto the curving wing-line of the sports car rather than fairing them in. He reasoned that the curves would be expensive and complicated, which is true, but the result looked lousy. The same applied to the flat grille. Eventually the foreman in the sheet metal shop and myself made up bending jigs, worked out ways of making the sections and built the new front up like that."

H.F.S. knew that his son's period of ownership of the business was going to have troubled times, as would any specialist sports car manufacturer. "One year I remember being on the Motor Show stand when somebody came up and said, 'Harry, you know you're a lucky man being able to make cars as a hobby,' and I caught father's eye and he frowned a bit. When this chap had gone, father turned to me and said firmly,'Even if that were true, and plainly it's not, you can take it from me it will never be like that in your time.'He knew ... mmmm ... he knew..."

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PO Box 2290 Gateway Station
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