MORGAN 3 WHEELER

It may not be New Year, but I am going to resolve to spend more time at Morgan over the next 12 months. In an industry where getting to drive a new car usually involves an aeroplane, a bus, a

lengthy press conference, two days of your life and access, if you’re lucky, to the bloke responsible for the door handles, the Morgan approach is a gust of fresh air strong enough to knock you off your feet. You turn up and are met by none other than Charles Morgan, as brimful of enthusiasm now as he was when I borrowed my first Plus 8 from him 20-something years ago. He starts to talk you through the controls before apparently realising that, this being a Morgan, there is really very little to talk about. So he tosses you the keys and says, “we’ll talk when you get

back” before turning on his heels and sweeping back into the same factory in which his grandfather, H F S Morgan, started building three-wheelers 102 years ago. How appropriate, then, that it is Charles’s new three-wheeler that has brought me back today. Shamefully I’ve never driven the original

so am in no position to compare and contrast, but even the prototype properly looks the part. Production cars will begin to nose their way out of the gates and into the arms of customers at the rate of around one a day, starting at the end of September. For now the prototype awaits. It is fascinating. Let’s start with the engine. It’s made by respected US V-twin specialist S&S, whose products are more usually found rumbling around inside Harley-Davidsons. It displaces 1982cc, meaning each piston sweeps near enough an entire litre of capacity. Unsurprisingly it majors on torque rather than power, but this is hardly a problem. The whole assembly save the oil tank needed for its dry sump lubrication sits ahead of the double wishbone front suspension and feeds power rearward through a Mazda MX5 transmission to a fat, belt-driven