It happened
in 1967 :
In this mock Edwardian decade,
in which we have taken to reproducing the cutglass bowls and
high-button shoes of our grandfathers, we are committing the
curious paradox of banishing, at the same time, the authentic
relic of their motoring hours.
We are consigning the Morgan
to history. The last of the great coal carts, a car almost
unchanged since 1910-except for the addition of a fourth wheel,
a few minor Suspension changes to go with, and a slightly
updated engine-a pure antique, and our federal government
has decreed it is no longer to be brought to our shores.
It is not to be expected that
a firm which has survived with the same basic design for almost
60 years will give up easily. No, Morgan swears it will be
back in 1969 with an all-new car. But "all-new"
is an anathema to Morgan, always has been, and though surely
the company will try to meet our federal standards, their
own traditions might subvert that accomplishment.
But the classic Morgan as we
have known it, perfectly safe, even exciting, for generations
of enthusiasts, has suddenly been put beyond the pale for
our colorless, antiseptic, spoon-fed citizens. It is almost
like a retroactive Coast Guard examination of the Titanic.
If the all-new '69 Morgan is
stillbornthrough the device of Dr. William Haddon's midwifery-it
will be a near-fatal blow to the Morgan Car Company, which
sells almost two-thirds of its production in this country.
The Morgan Car Company, like its product, is not quite prepared
to survive in our contemporary world.
Peter Morgan (contemplating the
'69 with some annoyance, you may be sure) continues to build
a four-wheeler his founder/father would admire: a simple,
wood-braced, hand-formed artifact that is so much a tribute
to Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan it is barely distinguishable
from the car he built in the late Thirties when he reluctantly
made a square of a triangle and bowed to the fad of the four-wheeler.
It still takes weeks to build a single car, the glue pot still
bubbles at Malvern, and although production is up to 12 cars
a week, the Morgan is basically a hand-built, hand-formed
motorcar.
It is hard to imagine that the
90 or more artisans who create the Morgan will survive when
Morgan sales are cut back 65%. They must be the last of the
great blacksmith/coachbuilder car families-scorning the National
Health Service, voting Conservative, setting off to work with
great dignity and purpose. Nor can they be young men anymore.
What must they think of our government's edict, which scorns
a quality of workmanship we barely see any longer and celebrates
instead the ideal of a machine-spewed plastic cocoon for anyone
who ventures on the highway?
Their regret will surely be philosophical
compared to that of the Morgan Owners Club in this country.
Representing a hard-core band
of unreconstructed car nuts, the MOC considers anything built
since 1936 a flash in the pan. They see nothing inconsistent
in owning a 1967 Morgan-it is, after all, a brand new, perfectly
restored car of the Thirties -even the Twenties. And there
are no Invictas, no HRGs, no Squires left to own. There is
only the Morgan.
They're not alone. The Chairman
of the Board of Governors of the Sports Car Club of America
will watch the Morgan go with great regret. So will a feisty
young man from Southern California. So will a pretty graduate
student in Washington, D.C.
Lew Spencer was one of the great
Morgan drivers in the late '50s when he ran "Baby Doll,"
at the head of the pack in almost every Class C-production
event on the West Coast. He humbled the previously all-conquering
Bristols in his dark blue, Weber-carbureted lightweight, and
made an enviable reputation that led him to a factory ride
with Shelby American.
Carl Swanson was the 1966 National
Champion in E-production, winning the Riverside race for the
title in the only Morgan in a pack of Porsches. And although
Pat Mernone has given up driving, she was a familiar figure
in a G-production Morgan in the Northeast Division.
When word got out that the classic
Morgan would very likely be off the market, there was a run
on the cars, and all that was available to us was a tacky
4-seater which was duly delivered to our garage. With a photographer
assigned, the test strip reserved, and a proper mood carefully
cultivated, we set off. The 4-seater wouldn't start. Nothing
could persuade it to. Nothing in the world. Typical. We went
back to the office to call the distributor and found a call
waiting for us. A salesman had been out to our garage with
a customer, the car had been sold, and would we mind taking
another? Of course not, but didn't the man know the car wouldn't
start? Of course he did, and so did the customer, and it didn't
make a bit of difference in the world. The customer was a
Morgan buyer, he said, as if that would explain it all. In
fact, it explained it perfectly well. Antiques are not meant
to run on time. Antiques are meant to be looked after, tended,
coaxed. It is a reaffirmation and a joy when an antique won't
start. How else can you be sure it's an antique?
We discovered the answer to that
when we got our 2-seater the next day. Our Technical Editor
had approached the Morgan steeped in his era's belief that
everything on a good car works. This product of the bright
new generation was appalled by the Morgan. The door opened
from the inside-and, at that, it opened reluctantly and sagged
a little on the hinges. The seat was adjustable-as it has
always beenonly by inflation of the seat cushion. And the
flat windshield was only inches away from the Bluemels steering
wheel, which was, in turn, only inches away from the driver's
chest. Our Technical Editor drove the car in its drag strip
trials, got out, and took the train back to the office. "It's
a stone," he said in disgust. He was born 20 years too
late for the Morgan-poor soul. It's all a matter of approach.
Park a Morgan in a country lane
in the autumn sun near a tree so that the dappled sunlight
can reflect from its long, louvered hood, hinged at the top.
Park it so its wire wheels glisten, so its leather seats invite
you to tour winding back roads. Park a Morgan in the city
on a Sunday morning and watch a father, trailing a troop of
daughters, look at the car with wistfulness and envy. Park
a Morgan in the rainy night with the tonneau zipped and see
the drops bead on its taut surface. And when you come to drive
it, stand back a moment and look at its stance: long in the
engine, short-coupled rear. Only one spare tire these days
(there used to be two, and not so long ago at that), sitting
vertically at the back; high wheels, forthright fenders-genuine
fenders, fenders as they were meant to be. And as you get
in theMorgan-opening the door from the inside -listen to the
pneumatic cushion sigh as you settle down in the cockpit and
stretch to reach the pedals; your right leg, knee and thigh
pressed tight against the transmission tunnel. Of course everything
is close: the wheel and the wooden dashboard with its big,
round simple instruments; shouldn't they be? Where did this
armsout stuff come from, anyway? Surely not Morgan, not MG,
not Bugatti. Why did the great Tazio Nuvolari forever have
his elbows crooked out when he was sawing away at the wheel
of his Alfa?
The Morgan starts-when it starts-on
a familiar key. The 2.2-liter TR-4 engine fires with a well-known
sound (somehow changed by its surroundings). Depress the clutch
(God, it's hard), crunch the old Jaguar gearbox non-synchro
low gear, and you're off. Directly. That's the very first
thing you notice about a Morgan. Everything's so damn direct.
You feel every pebble on the road through the steering wheel,
and your foot-(time and marshmallow cars have made it clumsy)
seems to operate directly on the engine. You can't get the
Morgan operating smoothly for miles. Ali, but when you do-and
when you find a relatively smooth surface-you understand what
was exciting about sports carring in the Thirties. You understand
how Lew Spencer humbled the Bristols, and Carl Swanson the
Porsches. You understand laissez faire motoring at its best.
Twitch the wheel, and out goes the tail of the Morgan. Just
as far as you want, for just as long as you want, for just
the result you want. Fangio used to set up a slide for each
corner. Be Fangio; the Morgan makes it easy. And you can see
what you're doing. Everything you're doing. You can see the
front fenders pounding from the sliding pillar front suspension
(welds will break in exactly the same places on those fenders
in time; they always have, they always will). You can look
out over the side and see the bump that put the Morgan five
feet in the air; a bump a Porsche would have brushed aside.
And laterstraining to turn around in front of the full-length
mirror at home-you will see the beginnings of the bruises
on your backside. The steering, like the rest of the car,
is direct, almost too direct. You have to give a great wrench
on the wheel to go anywhere, and any subtlety is absolutely
lost on the Morgan. The result is a dramatic change in direction,
with a suddenness that is startling. And should you be imprudent
enough to set forth upon a bad road, you will live to regret
it. A tar divider strip will launch the Morgan on a flight
that would put a Hell Driver to shame-a genuine bump will
qualify you for flight pay. Still, it's not the take-off that
gets you; it's the landing. About three landings a week should
be tops. Anatomically. If you're contemplating a Morgan, see
your doctor first.
With all this, however, there's
a generous portion of performance. The Morganlighter than
the TR-4-performs smartly in the quarter-mile, turning 81.2
mph in 16.9 seconds. Add the smooth-track handling, and things
begin to make sense. Top speed is about 110 mph; our test
car was taken up to 95 mph and was still pulling when our
Technical Editor backed off.
The problem with our Technical
Editor was that he actually tried to understand the Morgan,
what it was, what it did, where it, managed to fit into the
community of nations. What the Morgan meant in the greater
scheme of things. Futility. You either accept a Morgan as
you accept the Himalayas, or you go on to more splendid things.
Butterfly classification, phrenology, alchemy. A Morgan merely
is. That should be enough.
If Peter Morgan's all-new '69
dies a-borning, and it might, it would be more proper to say
a Morgan merely was, our federal.. safety standards have seen
to the past tense. And that is a sad, sad thing for many.
Oddly, one of those many was a 9-year-old boy who came with
us when we went out to photograph this almost-lastof-the-Morgans.
It was four in the morning and it was raining, and the boy
was up for the first time in his life of his own choice at
that evil hour. The city streets were empty, as the Morgan,
top down, bucked and snorted by darkened buildings and through
a long tunnel to the parkway. He had never been in a roadster
in the rain, that 9-year-old. Most especially not a Morgan,
and he was perfectly delighted to find that, at 50 mph, he
wasn't getting wet. He loved the bouncing, darting behavior
of the car in the rain on the bumpy expressway-he had never
really been in a car anything like this one, he said.. In
fact he said, it was almost as though he had never been in
a car at all before. Of course he hadn't. This 9-year-old,
almost the last 9-year-old ever to experience it, was bounding
around in the passenger seat of a car of another era. He was
taken back in time by that Morgan, in the rain and the darkness.
And he couldn't help but respond to it.
It's no use saying the Morgan
is a put-. on in 1967, it's no use saying it's the last of
the new antiques. There was virtue to the Thirties, a simplicity,
and a demand on the human to participate that we've long since
given up. And that's what the Morgan means, and that's what
we're shipping off, perhaps forever. The Thirties are gonefor
the best-and goodbye. Now, it seems, Farewell to the Morgan. |
