Malvern Link, England“NOT everything good has to be an iPod or iPad,” said Charles Morgan, the dashing chairman of the Morgan Motor Company. “Brand new ideas are wonderful when they happen, but sometimes there’s good in older ones, too.”
With that, he slipped into one of his company’s diminutive new 3-Wheelers — an attractive re-imagining of the successful 3-wheel cars that put the family business on the road a century ago — and sped off.
To be sure, Morgan has for some time earned its keep in finding the good in older ideas. Still occupying the same site on Pickersleigh Road in this Worcestershire village where Mr. Morgan’s grandfather, H. F. S. Morgan, and great-grandfather, the Rev. H. G. Morgan, built a factory in 1918, the company has long been known for its resistance to modern methods of mass production.
Morgan builds sports cars the old-fashioned way, with hand-formed aluminum panels, wooden body frames assembled on site and, on 4-wheel models, sliding pillar front suspensions whose conception (and brutal ride quality) can be traced to the dawn of the last century, if not earlier.
Unheard-of in car factories today, visitors seem free to wander the laid-back premises of “the Morgan’s,” where rows of brick and mortar sheds with blue wooden barn doors have welcomed as many as a half-dozen generations of families who have come to work here.
There is much new afoot under Charles Morgan, a former documentary filmmaker and only the company’s third chairman — he took the reins shortly before the death of his father, Peter, in 2003. Yet today’s most recognizable model, the 4/4, has a lineage and name dating to 1936.
Of note here, one of the “4s” in the 4/4 model designation referred to that car’s four wheels, the other signifying its number of cylinders. That was big news at the time for a company that had grown up building tiny 3-wheel roadsters with exposed engines, typically 2-cylinder designs shared with contemporary motorcycles, situated proudly at the extreme front of their chassis.
The two front wheels handled steering duties and the single one at the rear transmitted power to the ground. The formula had its advantages: these Morgans were licensed as motorcycles under British law, incurring lower taxes than automobiles.
In the 21st century, that motorcycle designation still advances the cause of automotive eclecticism, subjecting the new Morgan 3-Wheeler to the less stringent emissions and safety standards of 2-wheel vehicles.
Licensing the driver of a 3-wheel vehicle is not as straightforward, varying greatly from state to state. In California, for instance, all that’s needed to pilot a 3-Wheeler is a car license. Most everywhere else a motorcycle license is required, and to further complicate matters, some states require that the driving test be taken on a 2-wheeler in order to get a license to drive a 3-wheel vehicle.
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