Morgan - a traditional sort of sports car

I'VE been asked, by my new employers, to find a secondhand car for sale at one of Britain's hundreds of classic car dealers and take it for a test drive. Will this suit the bill?

It's a 1997 Morgan +4 and if you're interested - which, if you like reading Life On Cars, you probably will be - it's yours for £24,500. Yes, I know that's the same sort of money as a showroom fresh Focus ST, a brand new Toyota GT-86 or a gleaming Golf GTI, but this is a much more enticing prospect. This is an immaculate Morgan that belies its years because it feels as though it's only just been run in.

Regular readers will already know I've got a soft spot for traditional sports cars and what I reckon this lacks in showroom-fresh reliability and warranty it makes up by just feeling more alive somehow. On a grey day at Southport sands it looked the part, and there's something about the view down that long, louvred bonnet that makes this a motoring experience rather than just a drive.

Would I have one over a GT-86? Not if I had to use it every day - it's heavy, defiantly old fashioned and I get the feeling taking a +4 to Tesco would spoil the Morgan magic somehow. But given a sunny day and a set of windy lanes to a country pub, this would run rings around the Toyota.

I mean, just look at it...

Video: Morgan factory

SUPPOSE you were in the lucky position to have Morgan's mad Threewheeler on order.

That's the position a friend of Life On Cars is in, and on a trip to see how his Threewheeler was taking shape he recorded this video of life at the company's Malvern factory.

It gives a fascinating insight not only into how the Threewheeler - one of the best cars I've driven all year - takes shape, but also into how its more conventional four-wheeled siblings are crafted and at why Morgan is still quite unlike any other car maker in the country. Having also toured the old TVR factory in Blackpool before it closed and the Lotus plant in Norfolk earlier this year, it almost tempts me to take a trip down to Worcestershire and see it for myself.

If you're a fan of the Threewheeler but can't afford the £30,000 pricetag then you'll probably like this one...

Fire up the... Morgan Threewheeler

IT'S A new model for the Worcestershire-based sports car builders but not in the conventional sense.

By ditching a rear wheel Morgan are revisiting territory they first trod a century ago, when the company appealed to the newfangled worlds of motoring and biking by fitting tiny little two-seaters with V-twin engines and minimal bodywork. Think of the new Threewheeler, then, as a remake of one of Britain’s oldest automotive adventures.

You’d think that’d make the Threewheeler a frantic bit of fun and it is - but only when you’re happy for it come out to play. Admittedly, it’s not a car you’d ever want to take to Waitrose and if it rains you WILL get wet but for such an outlandish and overt bit of automotive engineering it’s remarkably civil, and it’ll dawdle along as long as you like.

But plant your foot to the floor in just about any gear and the so-bonkers-it’s-brilliant Threewheeler unleashes its considerable firepower in an explosion of noise and speed, which you’re all the more aware of because the wind’s hitting you straight in the face and because absolutely everyone for miles around is looking at you. If they aren’t, they’ll definitely hear you coming.


Despite being friendlier and more manageable than I could’ve have hoped for - at first you’ll wonder where those beautiful wire wheels at the front are, but you get used to it - it is completely unlike anything I’ve driven before. It is a sort of cross between the open-air buzz of a microlight and the vintage style of a Sopwith Camel fighter plane with the deep-throated roar of an old TVR and the sheer punch of a motorbike thrown in.

So it’s my kind of car and - at £30,000 - actually cheaper than the more conventional four-wheelers Morgan fans already know and love.

A full feature on the Threewheeler will appear in the Spring edition of Gr8Life Magazine.

The Morgan Threewheeler is just a little bit mad. That's why I love it

IT'S a little bit like walking through Liverpool One on a busy Christmas Eve naked. Or at least, that's what I imagine it's like.

That's the thing with the Morgan Threewheeler, because you're cold, you're exposed and - although you wouldn't want to admit it - just a little bit liberated. Oh, and absolutely everybody, for miles around, will be looking at you. Jaws drop to the floor. Morgan's latest motor is marvellous for all sorts of reasons, but it's emphatically not a car for anyone who's a bit self-conscious.

The photoshoot Champion photographer Martyn Snape and I did with the Moggy last week for our sister magazine GR8Life was a nightmare, because the Threewheeler's got the same crowd-pulling punch as anything Ferrari or Lamborghini make. In fact I'd argue it's got more, because a Ferrari is at least vaguely familiar whereas a three-wheeled vintage sports car with no roof, no doors and no windscreen isn't. Every time we got the shot set up, someone would wander over with a smartphone and start snapping away themselves.

A leather-clad biker in his middle ages asked us how many numbers on that week's Euromillions he'd need to afford one. Two rotund ladies jokingly offered to pose on the bonnets, Page Three style. A talkative toddler demanded that his equally curious dad found out what this strangely styled car was.

All this from a small sports car that hadn't even been started up.

When you do you realise it makes a bizarrely brilliant contribution to road safety - the S&S motorbike engine, mounted right at the front, is so loud that no pedestrian anywhere could possiby argue “Oh, I never heard it coming”. It is so intoxicatingly and defiantly loud that I have no idea how it got passed by the EU noise boffins in Brussels, but I'm glad it did.

It's not really a car in any conventional sense but a sort of automotive adventure in which you're always the lead actor, playing the role of a plucky British action hero who spends his days bumbling noisily down the country lanes to solve crimes committed at quaint country pubs. Naturally, said hero can't help being a bit of a showoff.

What's it like to drive a £30,000 three-wheeled sports car which looks a bit like a cross between a Blower Bentley and First World War fighter plane? Tune in next week when it gets the full Life On Cars road test treatment...