The Plus years

By 1950 the Morgan was forty years old and looked it—and that was half the point! What changed over the next eighteen years was everything underneath: a bigger engine, a new market across the Atlantic, a class win at Le Mans, a glass-fibre coupé that nobody bought, and an American V8 that would carry the company for decades. It is also where I come in…

The Registry holds 2,417 cars built in these years. 1,732 of them, 72%, are in the United States today, which tells you the shape of this chapter. See them all.

1947–1952A bigger engine

The trouble started in 1947, when the Standard Motor Company announced that it would build one engine and no other. The special 1,267 cc unit it had been making for the 4-4 would end after 1949, and Morgan had to find something else. Unsigned company history

Peter Morgan, the founder’s son, had joined the firm that year as a development engineer and draughtsman, back from the army. Unsigned company history, Wikipedia The obvious engine was Standard’s new 2,088 cc Vanguard. The obstacle was his father, who would not have an engine over 1,750 cc in a Morgan. So Peter fitted the Vanguard anyway, and then let the car make the argument! Classic & Sports Car

It worked. The Plus 4 was shown at the Earl’s Court Motor Show in October 1950, with 68 bhp, a stronger frame and a Moss gearbox, and deliveries began in 1951. Wikipedia, Unsigned company history, Classic & Sports Car Motor Sport remembered it a year later as “an exciting newcomer” at Earl’s Court, with 68 bhp in an eight-foot wheelbase chassis. Motor Sport, October 1951 In 1951, and again in 1952, Morgan won the team prize on the RAC Rally, with Peter Morgan driving in both teams. Unsigned company history

The Registry has 231 Plus 4s built from 1950 to 1953, the flat-radiator years. See them.

1939–1968America

The American story began before the war. A New York dealer, J.B. Ferguson, met H.F.S. Morgan at the London Motor Show in 1938 and had imported his first few Morgans by early 1939. His firm, Fergus Motors, became Fergus Imported Cars and then, in September 1963, Fergus-Fine Cars, and by the 1960’s it was taking about twenty Morgans a month. Ferguson Club

The Plus 4 opened the West Coast. The first one for America went to Angell Motors in Pasadena in January 1951, and the first for the East Coast to Fergus that March. Those dates are from the Registry timeline.

In 1960 Morgan told Road & Track that about 80% of its cars went to America, split evenly between the two coasts. Classic & Sports Car And the Americans raced them! Lew Spencer’s Plus 4, Baby Doll, was a regular on the winners’ rostrum and built up a large following. Unsigned company history

My own first look at one came the other way round, in England. On a three-month fellowship in London in 1968, I saw a beautiful 1960-ish Plus 4 at a tennis match, and while I was taking several pictures (some girl kept getting in the way!), I noticed how its classic lines belied its performance. I never got to sit in it, alas… That story is in my Saga.

1953–1956Flat, interim, cowled

If you are dating a Plus 4, this is the change to know. Until late 1953 the radiator stood upright and flat at the front, as it had on every four-wheeled Morgan. Then it went behind a curved cowl blended into the bonnet. The first cars had an interim cowl that curved back only at the top, and only about nineteen were built that way—if you have one, you have a rare bird! The final shape, curved at the top and sides, followed in 1954. Wikipedia, gomog.com

Under the bonnet, the Vanguard gave way to Triumph’s TR2 engine with 90 bhp, and then the TR3 with 100. Unsigned company history, Classic & Sports Car Peter Morgan also brought back the cheaper 4/4 in 1955, as the Series II with a Ford engine. Wikipedia

1959The founder’s last years

H.F.S. Morgan died in June 1959, fifty years after he built his first car. Wikipedia Peter Morgan became chairman, and his first problem was a serious tax bill. Wikipedia

1958–1962The plate that won Le Mans

Now for one of my favourite Morgan stories! Chris Lawrence bought a second-hand Plus 4 for £650 and first raced it on his birthday, 27 July 1958. It was registered TOK 258. Hagerty UK By the Registry timeline’s account, his first win in a Morgan came at Brands Hatch in May 1959, and he kept right on winning.

In 1961 he and Richard Shepherd-Barron entered a Plus 4 for Le Mans. It passed the first checks, and then the organisers turned it away: it was not in the spirit of the race, they said, and amounted to a car from 1939 with disc brakes! Lawrence later learned that Triumph’s team manager, Ken Richardson, had lobbied against them. Hagerty UK

For 1962 Lawrence persuaded Peter Morgan to enter the car as a works team, which the organisers would find harder to refuse. He then quietly had TOK 258 rebodied, lower and with less frontal area, and fitted a hardtop. Peter objected, and then accepted it. Hagerty UK

In June 1962 Lawrence and Shepherd-Barron won the 2-litre GT class and finished 13th overall, over 2,255 miles at almost 94 mph. Hagerty UK, 24h-lemans.com And then, after twenty-four hours of racing, the car was driven home to England on the road! Unsigned company history

So which car won? A registration plate can move from car to car, and this one did. The Registry holds both of the cars that claim the win. The published accounts, and the Registry owners’ own words, are below—you be the judge!

1963–1967The coupé, and the SLR

At the Earl’s Court show in 1963 Morgan surprised everyone with the Plus 4 Plus: a closed glass-fibre coupé on the Plus 4 chassis, with a Triumph TR4 engine. It was light and quick, with a top speed of about 115 mph, and it did not sell. Twenty-six were built before it was dropped in 1967. Wikipedia, Unsigned company history The Registry holds 26. See them. When I first visited the factory in 1972, there was an open shed by the entrance gate full of used and extra parts, including two fibreglass shells for the Plus 4 Plus! I wonder whatever happened to them?

In 1964 Chris Lawrence and John Sprinzel designed the SLR, a streamlined racing coupé on a Plus 4 chassis. Unsigned company history Very few were built. I saw one under wraps at Isis Imports in San Francisco in 1996, the only one in the USA at that time, and needless to say my camera was working overtime!

1966–1968A V8 from Buick

By 1966 Triumph’s four-cylinder engine was near the end of its life. Rover offered Morgan its new aluminium V8, and Morgan hired an engineer, Maurice Owen, to build a car around it. Unsigned company history The engine had begun as a Buick: for the prototype, Morgan bought a Buick 215 from General Motors in 1967. Wikipedia According to the Registry timeline, the first Plus 8 ran in February 1967. That prototype was a converted Plus 4, and I saw it at Isis Imports in 1996: the only visible difference was two small bubbles in the bonnet for the SU carburettors. It still looked mighty potent!

The Plus 8 went on public show at Earl’s Court in October 1968, with Rover’s 3.5-litre V8 and a Moss gearbox. Wikipedia, Grace’s Guide It would stay in production, with the same family of engine, until 2004. The Registry has 223 Plus 8s built before 1973, the Moss-gearbox years. See them.

Motor Sport’s Bill Boddy, visiting the Morgan stand at the London show, called it “the new V8 sports car”, and in December 1968 he road-tested one. It had 161 horsepower net from the Rover engine, the Moss gearbox from the Plus 4, a top speed of 125 mph and a price of £1,487, purchase tax included. (The Registry’s price list gives £1,155 for 1968, which looks like the price before tax.) Morgan was making two a week and meant to reach about five a week in 1969. Motor Sport, November 1968, Motor Sport, December 1968

A year later, serving in the Army in western Louisiana with nothing to do in my spare time but read, I came across the December 1969 issue of Road & Track, and it hit me like a ton of bricks! There, in all its pristine glory, was THE car that I had to have. A shape like that, with a V8, was simply too much to pass over. I wrote to the factory and ordered one with nearly every option they offered… The rest of that story is in my Saga, and the next chapter is the Plus 8’s own: thirty years in which America closed its doors to the Morgan, and a San Francisco importer found a way back in.