2-4-6-8 ain't never too late

Morgan's sports-car legacy spans more than a century, with the V-twin three-wheeler, and four-pot, V6 and V8 roadsters

- SIMON HUCKNALL

In the past five years, the Morgan Motor Company's staple line-up has undergone its biggest technological shift in decades. Still imbued with a generous dose of visual nostalgia, the Plus Four and Plus Six have done away with the steel platform that had previously underpinned most models from the Malvern firm since 1936, replacing it with one formed in aluminium, and carrying (whisper it) double wishbones at each corner. Even the Super 3 three-wheeler is now powered by an inboard, in-line three-cylinder motor, after its earlier exposed V-twin engine succumbed to evertightening emissions regulations.

But what goes around comes around. What we perceive as a company mired in yore is one that has evolved - in its ethos, as well as its engineering - many times before. And the four cars gathered here today, their two-, four-, six- and eight-cylinder powerplants representing every production engine configuration from Morgan in the 20th century, plus one from the 21st, tell the tale of a car maker whose identity has moved with the times more than you might credit.

The oldest car here - the dinky 1935 Super Sports marks the final days of Morgan's three-wheeled products in the previous century, a design template that had served it well since Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan produced the first one in 1910. Conceived as a simple, low-cost cyclecar attracting around half the road tax of a four-wheeled vehicle, by 1937 the three-wheeler range was far more daring and enthusiast-led, comprising Sports, Super Sports and the four-cylinder F-type models. The latter's inboard 'four' mirrored the Super 3's shift to an enclosed triple some 80 years later, though at the time with improved refinement being the goal.