The Morgan Shooting Brake
MOG Magazine|February 2017

Perhaps the biggest challenge I’ve faced in these New Perspectives articles is selecting the vehicle type to base my study upon. ‘To design a vehicle that Morgan would never produce, in the style of a Morgan’ has often detached me from my comfort zone. Each month I begin by staring at a blank piece of paper and wondering what would I want to see from a tractor, boat, aeroplane or van. Whilst the industrial design process excites me regardless of the subject matter, it is fair to say the motorbike, Aero race car or hotrod were easier studies as I could draw from my own personal enthusiasm for these vehicle types. On the whole, I havehad to think entirely ‘out of the box’.

Jon Wells
The Morgan Shooting Brake

This is my penultimate feature. Next month I aim to summarise all of the sketches I’ve produced in this series in the hope that some conclusions can be drawn from my investigations into Morgan’s fictional ‘whacky racers’ line up. Technically, this will be the last series of sketches. Considering this, I decided to go out softly and work on something familiar.

As ever these are only first attempts at drawing a theoretical new vehicle type for Morgan. The sketches should be viewed as avatar in which to demonstrate how the process might begin, rather than displaying resolved design proposals! This being said, I have often imagined how much fun it would be to be given this brief formally. This month’s ‘design a vehicle Morgan would never produce’ brief should perhaps be read as ‘design a vehicle Morgan would never produce… but I might!‘

Introducing the Morgan Shooting Brake. Virtually every major automotive manufacturer has, at some point, designed a ‘Shooting Brake’, or ‘wagon’ as some might have it, perhaps it’s time Morgan did…? This is a loaded suggestion as I myself have seriously contemplated the idea... Last year, I was facing the (not unpleasant) decision to replace my personal car with a two-seater sporty flavour. Whilst I won’t deny that a certain well-known German company was tempting me for a second with their two-seater, mid-engine offerings, I was more entertained by the idea of getting into a Morgan myself. The company now offers some appealing finance packages and I was convincing myself of the investment value. I’ve always fancied a 2.0l narrow body of my own and my partner, Kelly, didn’t need convincing either!

This story is from the February 2017 edition of MOG Magazine.

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This story is from the February 2017 edition of MOG Magazine.

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