Fire up the... Morgan 4/4

A version of this review appears in the December 2009 edition of GR8 Life



IF YOU or I were 100 years old, chances are we wouldn’t be anywhere near as quick, agile or downright good-looking as Morgan’s motors.

In fact, if the Malvern manufacturer’s series of sports cars had aged like the rest of us they’d no doubt be fighting off wrinkles and middle age spread. Instead, they’re fighting off the cream of the sports car world with a blend of space-age mechanics and bygone styling charm, and that’s part of the reason why so many people fall in love with them.

Morgan is just one of those motor firms that seems shrouded in mystique built up over decades of defiantly refusing to change the look of its products; the waiting lists that run into years, the cars lovingly made with bits of wood, the TV documentary where industrialist Sir John Harvey Jones urged to it to modernise or die.

Yet for all the mystery, the company’s still soldiering on a century after it constructed its first cars.

Anyone doubting Morgan’s ability to modernise is in for a shock if they visit any of the company’s showrooms, including Lifes Motors, in Southport.

In 2000 the Aero 8 challenged car fans with its unconventional looks but its utterly modern mechanics made it a rocketship roadster, still proving popular almost a decade later.

Yet the cars the company is still best known for are the traditional roadsters, which have faithfully followed the same stunning lines since the early Sixties. Not that many people know the shape’s actually registered as a trademark - and that’s a distinction it shares not with other sports cars, but design classics like the Coke bottle.

With its swoops and curves and lashings of chrome on the bumpers, grille and windscreen, machines like the 4/4 I’ve been driving look like they’ve escaped from a birthday card. Even before you get in it’s busy evoking images of quaint village pubs dotted across miles of empty country roads, in an era long before traffic jams were invented.

Unfortunately, it’s 2009 and losing my Morgan virginity meant threading it through Southport town centre, at roughly the same time as every child in the region finished school. Taking any unfamiliar car out can be a little daunting at first, but the thought of stalling a bright red, open-top sports car on Lord Street is on a whole new level, and somehow terror began to permeate the leather lining 4/4’s cabin.

I managed to avoid that embarrassing fate, but somehow I felt that even if I hadn’t, nobody would have been bothered anyway. Van drivers honked their approval and pedestrians waved as whooshed by, on our way out to quieter roads. It’s clear I wasn’t the only one falling for the 4/4, but the countryside was calling.

Admittedly, the Morgan I’ve always wanted to drive is the Plus 8, which from its introduction in 1968 melded those molten good looks to the rorty sound of the Rover V8, an engine which for decades has scared small children when used in generations of British sports cars.

The 4/4’s Ford unit is a couple of rungs further down the ladder, but it still gives you a surprising stream of speed as it throbs and burbles beneath that long bonnet. Morgan don’t make it in this guise anymore but the 2009 twist on the formula, the 4/4 Sport, starts at around £26,000.

The sensation you get when you finally reach the first sweeping bend is about as far removed from tinbox motoring as you can imagine, but somehow it feels alive!

It’s the not the sort of machine you can master in a day, with its unique umbrella-style handbrake proving a particular challenge, but it’s all the more endearing for it, and a feature you’ll easily get used to.

In fact, the main challenge during my time at the wheel was the wheel itself; it’s a beautiful carving of the finest wood, but a little large for my liking. Not that you’ll mind too much, as the feel for the road it gives you is superbly communicative.

The same goes for the ride, which you’ll either love or hate. It’s firm and fidgety – though not uncomfortable – but it does at least let you know exactly what those pretty wire wheels are doing.

The 4/4’s not the sports car for everyone, but it is an experience in its own right, and well worth a try if you’re bored of Boxsters and tired of TVRS.

I love it, and I can’t say that about many 100-year-olds.

The '80s are back, and it's terrible

I’VE been invited to a party!

Unfortunately, this year’s Champion festive bash is an ‘80s-themed-do, meaning chances are I’ll have to go in fancy dress, and the problem is most '80s characters tend not to just drive cars, but wear them like part of their outfit.

Most people boring enough to hire a car for their Christmas do usually go for a Hummer that’s lined with five miles of mini-bars and cheap lighting, but I usually try – and fail – to do things a bit more tastefully.

I tried once for months to get a Jag XJ12 (Google it) at my disposal for a party, but ended up giving up and going for a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow instead, before the hire company changed its mind. My grand arrival that night was courtesy of Merseyrail, so I’m determined to do it properly this time.

Anything too flashy is out for starters, so Knightrider, the Ferraris from Magnum P.I, Ferris Bueller’s Day Out and Miami Vice and anything Roger Moore drove are an expensive no-go area. I quite fancied Gene Hunt’s Audi Quattro but the thought of drunken thirtysomethings screaming “Fire up the Quattro!” at me is just too much.

I could go all Bodie and Doyle and handbrake-turn a Capri for the night, as I know a friend with several, but the resort’s roads are a bit slippy at this time of year. Chances are I’d spend my Christmas party in someone’s front garden, having powerslided off a wet roundabout. Just like the old days.

The best ever fancy dress costume I resorted to was Darth Vader – I had a really bad throat that night – but despite my ambitions to win something for the second time in my life I think turning up in an X-Wing Fighter might be a tad ambitious.

There is always the opposite end of the ‘80s spectrum, but that would mean dressing up as Morrissey, arriving by bicycle and spending the entire night pretending that I’m a vegetarian with a girlfriend in a coma. No thanks.

I think my only option is just to give up, take my own car into town, and pretend I’ve gone dressed as whatever 80s screen star it happens to project onto my Christmas-weary self.

That means I’ll be going as Mr Bean, then…

My far more tempting scrappage idea

THOU shalt not be led into temptation.

I appreciate the authors of that particular statement didn't have the scrappage scheme in mind when they came up with it, but it's a temptation all the same, and one I'm going to resist.

In what other world is a banger you bought for less than £500 suddenly worth four times that? It's mighty tempting to take the bait and get a cool two grand off at whichever dealership's nearest to your house, but chances are you'll be killing off a future classic with years of life left in it.

For those of you who haven't been living in a cave since the scrappage scheme started and later got extended, some background. In a bid to bring new car sales back to pre-credit-crunch levels, Generous Gordon can give you £2,000 off your next new car, but only if you give him a decade-old one to get rid off. Worryingly, it doesn't matter whether it's a Mondeo or a Maserati - anything given in gets the crusher treatment.

I actually thought about taking my motor around some showrooms for a laugh, just to see how many salesman I could get to salivate at the prospect of chopping it in to boost their sales figures. Yes, I know I've got too much spare time on my hands.

The only problem is that I'd be led into the exotic world of cars that actually work properly, where Fiat 500s and Ford Kas would stare seductively at me with their promises of three-year warranties and NCAP safety ratings. Before I know it, I'd be £8,000 and a classic car down, and all because some smug salesman offered me a free cup of coffee.

What especially annoyed me was Hyundai's proclamation this week that they've saved a Morris Minor Traveller from the scheme to help raise funds for Children In Need, but it's drop-in-the-ocean stuff.

The way I see car makers getting their sales up is by actually making things people want to buy, and giving us poor petrolheads some money to help keep bits of our heritage from disappearing altogether.

£2,000 for anyone who keeps a cherished classic going? It's a tempting offer.

Reader involved in M1 accident

A LIFE ON CARS reader has been involved in an accident on one of Britain’s busiest motorways.

John Pugh, MP for Southport, got in touch to say that he, his daughter, and her boyfriend were involved in a collision on the outside lane of the M1 yesterday, in which the Ford Fiesta in which they were travelling was badly damaged.

You may remember his earlier piece on here, in which he revealed he was a keen supporter of some of the resort’s older cars – and an opponent of seeing them destroyed in the Government’s scrappage scheme.

More information on the crash will be featured in The Southport Champion on Wednesday (November 25), but I’d like to wish both he and his family a speedy recovery from the effects of a terrible accident.

At least this facelift's better than the Fiat Punto...

AS PROMISED, here’s the interview I did with Dune FM’s Martin Hovden to plug Life On Cars, broadcast on November 6th across Southport and West Lancashire on his Live From Studio One Show.

You might also have noticed a few changes on here lately; that’s because – in order to tie the site in more with the sister column in The Champion newspaper – it’s just been given a facelift, including this snazzy logo which both newspaper and website have in common.

I just hope it’s a better facelift than Fiat (Multipla), Mercedes (SL) and Hyundai (Coupe MK1) can manage…

Don't throw Mervyn's money at the banks, spend it on cars instead

BRITAIN'S beleaguered bunch of bankers and business tsars really ought to stop ruining the economy and move into classic cars instead.

This is just one of the conclusions I've learned from a weekend traipsing around the Classic Motor Show, an annual gathering of beards, Brummies and old Bristols at the National Exhibition Centre, just outside Birmingham.



Sure, the sight of Alan Sugar sprawled underneath a Sunbeam Tiger is about as likely as Richard Hammond running Northern Rock, but I honestly think the world of classic cars could do with a little quantative easing.




Lots of you have probably been to these shows - our very own Woodvale Rally does a great job of showcasing Southport's older motors - but the telling thing wasn't actually the acres of polished panels adorning the show's entrants.

It was actually the suspicious number of car-sized trailers parked just outside, some probably costing more than their cargo. I wager that not one of the wheeled wonders at the show actually arrived under its own steam, which gives naïve visitors the wrong impression.



The best bits were undoubtedly the dream classics nobody could afford to run - apart from Sir Fred Goodwin, perhaps - but away from all the D-Types, Astons and Ferraris was a procession of MGs, Singers and other sad machines that spend their lives in lock-ups and had been ushered into the show on trailers like diva celebrities. Even Mariah Carey doesn't get that sort of treatment.

Don't get me wrong, the show was fantastic but too many of the machines just seemed the subject of Mervyn King-style investment. And there I was thinking the £5,500 my flatmate's just spent on another Ford Capri was a bit much.



In fact the real star of the show was in fact the lone Triumph Stag parked next to us in the car park, which had all those lovely telltale signs of actually being used on a daily basis. Away from the endless array of too-clean Cortinas and money-no-object Morris Marinas, this was a refreshing shot of reality.

The chap who owns it is clearly a sensible soul who knows how to spend money properly. I think he should be our leader.



Revisit Life On Cars later this week for more pictures from the show.

Life On Lawnmowers

I KNOW this blog’s called Life On Cars and therefore should only cover cars, but this week I’ll make an exception, mainly so I can post this gloriously cheesy picture.

As part of a new Champion series called Movers and Shakers I’ve met up with Brian Radam, the man behind the National Lawnmower Museum, based in Southport (no, really).

Among the seemingly millions of mowers proudly on display in Brian’s collection is one of Chaz and Di’s wedding presents, the latest robotic lawn monsters, and some speedy racing mowers, like this 300cc beast I took a liking to.

It turns out that we used to lead the world when it came to lawnmowers, with such illustrious names as Rolls-Royce, Velocette and, er, Wilkinson-Sword making machines your gardener could be proud of.

Shame that Britain’s lawnmower industry went the same way as the car makers, although the idea of them all joining forces to create a grass-cutting conglomerate – probably called British Leylawn – would probably have been a step too far.

We could have ended up with a world-class mower with razor-sharp blades, motorbike handling, and the engineering quality of a Rolls Royce. Or the Austin Allegro.

Anyway for mower information keep an eye out in The Champion for my piece on Mr Radam, or check out the museum’s website.

Old cars: brilliant but rubbish

IT’LL be all over by Christmas, apparently.

This isn’t just the mantra of governments waiting for wars to end – quite poignant at the moment, given it’s Remembrance Sunday – but of scores of people across the region who’ve started a classic car project. And still haven’t finished yet.

Take this Range Rover, for example. My dad bought it as a quick project nine years ago, when my biggest worries were GCSEs and figuring out how girls worked. Despite threatening to pass an MOT for at least half a decade it’s still loitering around his garage, sulking whenever someone tries to start it.

I’m a big fan of saving motors from meeting their maker, but just think what’s happened in that time. We’ve been in and out of Iraq, entire world economies have collapsed, and Oasis have split up. Most worryingly, the price of the jungle juice this V8 beast drinks daily has rocketed, meaning running around in something that struggles to get 15 miles to a gallon isn’t exactly fashionable anymore.



My Mini – fresh from a ribbing live on Dune FM last weekend – isn’t quite so severe, but the problem’s the same. It’s finally back in business after a broken braking system sentenced me to three weeks on the buses instead, but even now there’s a list of things that need sorting out. There’s always things always need sorting out.

It is possible to mend the eternal list of problems, but given that most normal people have other things to keep them occupied – like lives – any repairs are confined to the weekends, when anywhere that might sell you the spare parts is closed. This is the main reason why all those old cars you see on people’s driveways never move.

Look, if you really want to take on a rapidly decaying piece of our automotive heritage, please make sure you’ve got a car that actually works as well.

I suppose old cars are a bit more amusing than spending every night watching whatever Jedward is, which I doubt will still be annoying us in nine years’ time.

That’ll all be over by Christmas too, apparently…

Live On Cars

I’M A young Jeremy Clarkson in the making.

At least that’s according to Martin Hovden, who presents the Live From Studio One show at Southport-based radio station Dune FM, where I was invited to talk not just Life On Cars, but live on cars.

Among the highlights was having to defend my Mini live on air, explain why the worst cars you can buy today are the boring ones, and profess my love of Jags, Astons, and TVRs.

I’ll upload the broadcast properly as soon as I get it, but for the next seven days you can hear it on Dune FM’s website by visiting the Dune On Demand section and clicking “Martin Hovden – Live From Studio One”.

You’ll enjoy it. Honest.

Small children, look away now

JUST been sent a press release on a late entry for 2009's Ugliest Car Of The Year Award*.

The Skelta, pictured, is the Australian automotive industry's latest export to UK shores, and encompasses the open-top Spyder and the G-Force, a coupe with Mercedes-style gullwing doors.

It follows in the footpath of some magical motors - notably the Vauxhall VXR8 Bathhurst S, a rebadged Holden - but couldn't they have made just a bit prettier?

It's also worth mentioning the idea for this car was conceived while listening to a Beatles track (Helter Skelter, hence the name), which might go some way to explaining the slightly trippy styling.

I'm sure it's brilliant at scaring Ferraris, Porsches and Nissan GT-Rs on both road and racetrack, but it takes effort to come up with something this, er, challenging.

I'd still like a go though.

*The Ugliest Car of the Year Award doesn't actually exist. Yet.

A Champion of classic cars

SOUTHPORT'S MP has spoken this week of his bid to help save some of the town's most cherished classic cars from the UK-wide scrappage scheme.

John Pugh said on Monday (November 2) that although he could see the benefits of the scheme, which was extended in September in an effort to boost new car sales, he believed many classic cars were being unfairly destroyed.

"The other day I was lobbied as Lib Dem Treasury spokesman by representatives of the motor trade to back an extension of the 'successful' car scrappage scheme, and yes I saw the arguments for keeping the wheels of industry going, employment up etc but I have to say there were speaking to the wrong guy," he told Life On Cars.

"Backers of the scrappage scheme will tell you solemnly that these cars are not that fuel efficient but precisely because these cars are loved and cherished they are not driven much and therefore pollute less.

"They could actually be the green choice. Maybe the owners use public transport or bike a bit more because they clearly are people who think motoring should be an experience not a daily grind."

Dr Pugh, a keen reader of the Life On Cars motoring column in The Champion newspaper, said that he had seen many classic cars while canvassing in the town, including Triumph Stags, Ford Capris and Rover P4s, which he believes could be at risk of being lost forever if scrapped by their owners in order to get discounts on new cars.

A number of petitions and Facebook groups have been started by motorists opposed to the scheme, which gives new car buyers a £2000 discount if they scrap old motors more than a decade old.

However both the Government and the Society of Motor Manufacturers support the scheme, saying it helped boost the automotive industry in a time of recession.

"This is an extremely important decision that will inspire consumer and business confidence," said Paul Eviritt, SMMT's chief executive.

He added: "The additional 100,000 vehicles should help to counter the likely negative impacts of a return to the higher rate of VAT and the introduction of first year VED rates."

Dr Pugh, who drives around in a 1995 Toyota, is not among the 250,000 UK motorists who have taken advantage of the scheme.

Read more in The Southport Champion, published on November 4.

Farrari: Taiwan's greatest sports car

JUST last weekend I was offered a glimpse into a strange and exciting new world; one of someone who wasn't into their cars!

I know this because my friend - who, at the tender age of 23, is facing a midlife crisis - has decided she's got to start saving up for the ultimate Italian sports car. Yes, she wants to ditch her ageing Vauxhall Corsa for a Farrari.

A what, sorry? I thought it was Ferrari, with an 'e', that petrolheads the globe over get all misty-eyed over, but apparently no more. Lexus proved years ago that you can make a far-eastern motor that closely mimics a Mercedes - and still sell - so the idea of a cheap, knock-off Ferrari doesn't seem so far-fetched either.

Like Guccy watches and Nikey trainers, all Farraris would be made not by skilled Italian craftsman, but by small children in Taiwanese workshops, and then sold for £14.99. Compared to the £143,000 needed for the California, the real Ferrari's entry-level model, it's a bit of a bargain.

All Farraris would get plenty of power from their evocative two-stroke scooter engines, but then they'd need it to see off tough competition like the Porch 911 and the Lamburgini Murky Lager.

Luckily Farrari's fine racing heritage gives it a great pedigree and a following like no other. It might not be in F1, mind, but where better to showcase your sporting credentials than in the village cricket championship?

It's just a shame some of the models wearing that evocative prancing bull badge aren't quite up to scratch. The newest model, the 458 Ital, is clearly a minicab repainted in Italian Racing Red, while their entry-level roadster doesn't even have wheels.

As car firms go, I don't think Farrari's a bad one. Its cars might be a little lacking in some of the more important aspects - such as working - but five minutes of illustrious and imaginary heritage can't be wrong.

Once I'd finished my pint, I got back to the rather more pressing issue of cars that actually exist, and asked my co-drinker if she had anything else in mind.

"Definitely," she said sagely.

"A Kia Sedona would be lovely"...