Morganist faith
It's amazing that a company as small as Morgan has been able to keep up with the evolving complexities of U.S. emissions and safety regulations. In a very real sense, the folks at Malvern Link-and we-owe a great deal to a gentlemanly Anglophile named Bill Fink, whose Isis Imports is our usual source of Morgans here at R&T.
Bill got into all this back in the early Sixties through a love of collegiate rowing, practiced vigorously while ostensibly studying political history and business administration at Yale, Stanford and at Oxford, in England. While over there, he bought a Plus Four 4-Passenger Family Tourer (a green one, just like mine, come to think of it). Before long he found that he could turn a tidy little sum (I suspect with the emphasis on "tidy" and "little") through buying Morgans in the U.K., converting them to left-hand drive and selling them over here. He got to know people at the factory, and a storehouse of spares got him into Morgan parts distribution here in the U.S.
With the onslaught of federal regulations came a phone call from the owner of an independently-imported Morgan stuck in U.S. Customs. Bill knew a little about what was required to legalize the car; and he has been learning the rest ever since. Anti-intrusion door beams, firewall hoop structures, propane power for a while (though cars are all gasoline-fueled now), cold-start emissions controls, cost-effective bumper designs, OBD-2 hardware-and, Bill's latest learning curve, airbags.
Bill and his wife, Judy, live in Bodega, California, with a menagerie of pets, including a pair of 17-year-old Himalayan cats waking them up each morning at 4:00 a.m. to rumble. The Isis digs at Pier 33, San Francisco, has its own cat contingent led by a lovely calico.
Dennis Simanaitis
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The Plus 8s handling calls for no such hedge. On the other hand, here should lapse ever so briefly into the engineering past tense. A Morgan's rear suspension is classic simplicity; a live axle on semi-elliptic leaf springs, the entire (and considerable) mass snubbed by gas-over tube shocks. In front are Morgan's legendary sliding pillars, an arrangement dating from H.F.S.'s very first car and later used by the likes of Lancia as well for years. An independent system (indeed, perhaps a bit too independent), the hubs slide on vertical pillars, their load carried by coil springs and their motion damped by a pair of tube shocks. In theory, the front wheels are always parallel to the pillars; in practice, the pillars aren't necessarily parallel to anything else, yet the system evidently has its virtues. Our Plus 8 circled the skidpad at a highly respectable 0.86g and snaked around the slalom cones at 61.0 mph. Road Test Editor Patrick Hong reported that the car displayed good grip at both venues with only mild understeer. Patrick also noted a Morgan oddity that's part of its period charm: If the surface is anything but smooth, its front suspension has a way of bobbing around minutely, this way and that, as the Morgan rounds a corner. Plus, you sit low and well aft of the car's center of gravity-it's about even with your shins, I'd guess. Hence, your perspective of all this is distinctly unlike that of other cars. "I'd like more side support in the seat, though," said Patrick (and indeed, he can order the bolstered sport seat if he wants) |
No, Its chassis Isn't wood. It's galvanized steel, atop which wood, steel and aluminumare artfully (and classically) perched. By contrast, Feature Editor Andy Bornhop, R&T's 6-ft.-4-in. linebacker candidate, said, "The flat seats are very comfortable. And, besides, I don't need any side bolstering as I'm already up against the door anyway." I'm not as tall as Andy, but rather wider, and I too fit just fine. It's something of a circus act, however, to see me enter or exit with the top up (a bizarre and athletic display that's easily avoided by the simple expedient of leaving the top stowed). Said Bert Swift, Assistant Art Director and evident aesthete, "Despite the addition of some unsightly equipment-the driver airbag, for instance-the Morgan is still drop-dead gorgeous. Friends who have no interest in cars fall all over themselves to compliment it." In fact, this is an intangible characteristic of a Morgan (and one, alas, not shared by all enthusiast cars): It has a way of engendering good-hearted responses from everyone around you. If they're automotive enthusiasts, they likely already know something about Morgans and admire the car, at least in theory, for what it is. (I've had Ferrari owners give an acknowledging wave as we encounter each other.) And, as Bert learned, even if people aren't especially into cars themselves, they respond warmly to Morgan drivers because they assume that you're having fun. And, of course, they're absolutely correct in this assumption. |
