The British Are Coming! Well, They've Got Wood, At Least...

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > The British Are Coming! Well, They've Got Wood, At Least...

InitialDave: Jun 14, 2007; I Want To Believe.

Decided to make this its own thread, rather than just posting in one of the others, as I ended up with a fair number of pictures in the end, and it seems like the best option.

The chaps who run http://www.motorpunk.co.uk/ have got it into their heads that rumours of print media's demise are greatly exaggerated, and are starting a quarterly magazine. In order to get this off the ground, they ran a Kickstarter to cover things like initial print costs, and one of the options as a kickback for bunging them a few groats was a gathering at the Morgan factory for a meet up and private tour.

If you don't know who Morgan are, here is a TV documentary about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuDS23vjlaY

Yes, it's over forty years old, the thing with Morgan is that this doesn't really make much difference. There's a famous Soichiro Honda quote that in the future, there would be just half a dozen car companies. And Morgan. That's not a slight on them, rather an accurate reflection of the impression they give off that they are well aware of the direction car manufacturing has "advanced" in, and have (for the most part) politely declined to participate.

My friend and I rolled down to the Malvern hills for the noon startup time - there was an open invitation for anyone in anything interesting to park near the gates, but we went in a diesel Audi, so that wasn't on the cards! We parked round the back, which is also where Morgan stash their promo bus. Because of course they do.

As well as the stuff people had driven down in, Morgan themselves had rolled out a couple of their "heritage" cars they keep, such as this sixties Plus Four Plus:

Normally it'd live in the room the meetup was held in, which is one of the original manufacturing buildings, alongside a couple of Aero 8 racers, the original Aero 8 first-off car, and so on.

You can see on the racers the dimpling of the aluminium where it's been blasted with track debris coming off the wheels

While there is a small gift shop, it was closed on the weekend, but for future reference you can in fact buy Morgan-brand beers.

We all had a cuppa and there was a brief introduction from the Motorpunk guys, at which point we split into two groups to alternate the discussion of the magazine and the factory tour - the latter was first up for us, and that's what everyone's here for, but have a game of Where's Dave? before we start:

Into the factory proper, the entire place is made up of these small workshop areas for different tasks. What you're seeing here are the aluminium chassis that's used for the Aero 8, the manufacture of which is contracted out.

They're a pretty beefy design, made from welded box sections rather than anything clever like hydroforming custom tubes. The ones above aren't actually for Aeros, the Aero has a squared-off rear end that reminds me as much as anything of the shape of a Land Rover Hi-Cap bed, like these below:

The ones in that first shot are part of a limited run of fifty Plus 8 cars, wrapping the more traditional body over the Aero type chassis and BMW V8.

The engines are bought in complete, along with BMW gearboxes, only with an agreement to replace the BMW roundel with a Morgan badge.

Apparently BMW get a kick out of having their engines in something a bit interesting like this, and several members of the BMW upper echelons have a Morgan in their stable.

For the traditional models, 1.6/2.0 straight fours and 3.7 V6s are bought in from Ford, this might sound a bit "college girl Mustang" spec, but they're putting 300bhp into a car that weighs under a ton.

These are the chassis for the traditional line, a rather lightweight-looking ladder made with Z-section main rails. Extreme contrast to the chunkiness of the aluminium chassis.

Just a silly one - for the aluminium, the secondary chassis gubbins is attached with rivets and bonding, the guy doing it clearly wipes his tip ( :haw:

) in the same place after each bead he runs, leaving this beehive of gunk growing out the back of his workbench.

Looking down the ramp to the unit next door. The entire site is like this, each building stepping down the slope of the hill.

In that unit are cars being fitted for panelwork

You can see the ash framing that forms the body structure, the traditional coachbuilding approach you'd expect on what is, basically, a prewar car. We'll revisit that shortly.

These headlamp buckets are machine formed for Morgan, but everything else is handwork, much of it aligned by eye and based on manual measurement.

I really like the "raspy" finish on aluminium when it's having the broad strokes of this kind of fettling in progress.

Another building, and it's the one where the ash framing is done.

Again, all handmade to patterns.

The two big lumps on the bench are jigs for forming the rear arch curves. Multiple layers of wood laminated together, bent into the jig and clamped there until the glue dries.

So it takes the form to make this wing shape:

Other sections are glued and clamped, plus sealed in bags under heat lamps to cure:

The cup on top of it is a sample of glue, to confirm it'll have dried before pulling the assembly out.

Despite the traditional woodwork going on, they have a 3D printer in the corner for rapid prototyping parts:

We couldn't look in the paint shop, so next it's on to the trimming area. Which smells awesome.

You can have basically any colourscheme you want on a car, inside and out. Again, hand crafting is the order of the day.

You'll see the car's left-hand drive. About 70% of cars built are for Europe.

The engine is quite well tucked in there, but still accessible enough for you to poke at it:

Someone's stripped-out racer:

Downstairs once more, the final prep area with well-lit detailing areas and various testing kit for things like alignments:

Now, one thing we haven't looked at yet is the 3-wheeler, which is assembled in its own separate unit.

Hard to tell what they're going to end up like from the chassis alone:

The engines for these are American S&S 2.0 V-twins.

The gearboxes behind them are MX5/Miata units. I really like how they've got an engine that maintains that same look of the original JAP engined models, it wouldn't be the same with a boxer or something.

The gearbox output is to a bevel-drive unit, which itself then sends power to the wheel with a belt drive:

Twin tanks boxing in the rear wheel:

Interestingly, to meet Euro 4 emissions regs, they fit this "moustache" intake that goes to a filter unit under the bonnet:

It kind of spoils the look, as does the positioning of the rear lighting on long stalks to meet regs for that, but I asked, and yes, this stuff is suspiciously easy for someone to get off again if they wish to go for the "right" look.

Speaking of lighting, the American spec only need to be to Euro 3, so avoids the moustache, but there's a different localisation going on with "inboard" headlight placement:

Not quite finished, but this is how they "should" look IMHO:

Packed up ready to ship out:

The tour was really interesting, they have them as a regular thing you can book, and I'd thoroughly recommend it to any of you who find yourselves in that area, especially if you've seen what a modern car factory is like or have a background in similar manufacturing. The contrast with that is great.

As a parting shot, on the way home, there were a few people out in their weekend toys, but the winner has to be this guy: