What did it, really, was an excursion into learning how some British sports cars were built by hand starting with Day One, and in a few rare cases, still are today. The visitor took a self-guided tour of the factory and came away amazed at the hand craftsmanship that went into slowly producing the few new cars the factory built each year. It was like magically being transported to a time in the distant past, when cars that still used crank starters were built this way. Thrilled, the visitor decided he had to have one.
British motoring history is dotted with specialty firms that still do things using old-skill expertise and methodology, starting regally with Rolls-Royce. But this factory visitor wanted a sporting car that represented a level of hand fitting, constructing, and finishing that’s otherwise largely unknown today. The parameters that he laid down led to exactly one place: Malvern Links, England, and to the warren of brick industrial buildings where Morgan sports cars are still hand-assembled using the craft method, as it’s called. Put it this way: Morgan dates to 1910, but it was already behind the curve in terms of production modernity since Ransom Eli Olds began rope-pulling his curved-dash cars down a rudimentary line in 1901.
For the uninitiated, a Morgan sports car has always been produced by tacking hand-formed steel or aluminum sheet onto a wooden body framework hand-hewn from British ash, mating the assembly to a simple ladder frame and powering it by various off-the-shelf powertrain combinations sourced from British builders. The 1969 Morgan 4/4 featured here is actually the second Morgan owned by Bill Ward of Gold Canyon, Arizona, who took that factory trip before acquiring his first example in 1998. That was a Morgan Plus 4, a two-seat sports car, a step up from earlier Morgans thanks to its sheet-aluminum bodywork.
Bill moved to the Phoenix area from Washington state and in doing so, gave a home to two large dogs that he and his wife, Cassandra, enjoy taking on long trips. So, a two-seat Morgan didn’t work. Bill began trawling for an alternative, and arrived at this 1969 Morgan 4/4, an uncommonly rare car for reasons we’ll explain in a moment. It’s a well-traveled example–having gone since new from England to South Africa to British Columbia in Canada–before Bill brought it to the United States. He then undertook a series of modifications sourced across two continents to modernize the car, at least in the sense of being able to handle today’s traffic in the Arizona heat.
“My Dad used to take me to gymkhanas, local things, I think in a Kmart parking lot,” Bill remembered. “I fell in love with sports cars of all kinds, especially the Morgan. What appealed to me was the classic look of the car, and the fact that at around 2,000 pounds, it was pretty whippy. I bought the Plus 4 but decided we needed a four-seater, and I wanted to keep the four-seater, so I sold the Plus 4 in 2018.”
Bill learned a lot about Morgans over the past 25 years, starting with his pair of self-guided factory tours. He began reading the Morgan club’s magazine, which was where he spotted, in 2018, an ad for this car, unique for its four-place body.
How unique? Let’s talk Morgan history. Founder Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan started out in 1911 building his instantly recognizable three-wheeled sports cars with V-twin motorcycle engines hanging from the front, a layout that was compliant with British tax laws at the time, since they were classified as motorcycles. Morgan’s first great leap forward, relatively speaking, came in 1936 when it introduced the 4/4 as its first four-wheeled conveyance, the model name standing for four wheels and four cylinders, though built with the same antediluvian assembly practices that started with Job One. The 4/4 remained in continuous production, other than the war years, through 2018.
According to Bill’s research, an average of 250 copies of the 4/4 were built annually at Malvern Links from 1968 through 1982, all powered by the 1,599cc Ford Kent crossflow OHV four-cylinder engine, mated to a four-speed Ford manual transmission, that powered British Fords including the Cortina, Capri, and early U.S. Pintos. About 18 such cars, including his, received four-place bodywork each year. Bill’s car was delivered new to developer M.J. Sandrock, who brought it home to Johannesburg, South Africa. Engineer Ron Wilson bought it from Sandrock in 1972, before moving it with his family to British Columbia in 1994. The 4/4 had amassed more than 90,000 miles before Bill found it in the club magazine, traveled to Canada, met extensively with Wilson, and convinced him to sell him the car in 2016.
As delivered, the Ford Kent engine was rated at 95 horsepower, perhaps adequate for English country lanes but hurting seriously when the Morgan tried to cope with Phoenix freeway traffic that routinely cruises at 85 MPH. So, while leaving the car largely unchanged aesthetically, Bill gathered his troops and began transforming the 4/4 into something that was both safer and more pleasant to operate. Bill had taken the Morgan to about 103,000 miles before accepting that significant changes would be smart.
The first was undertaken by Brooklands British of Tacoma, Washington, which installed a larger-capacity aluminum radiator with integral electric fan. The next stop was in England, where Harris Performance Engines of Kent built a crossflow Kent inline-four that displaced 1,690 cubic-centimeters, fed by a single carburetor. According to Bill’s dyno sheet, the new engine produced 139 horsepower, with 136 lb-ft of torque. It’s mated to a five-speed overdrive Ford gearbox modified by BGH Gearbox Specialists, another English firm.
With new powertrain arrived in crates, Bill took the acquisitions to his local shop, Sports & Collector Car Center of Tempe, Arizona, which was already at work toughening the 4/4. The car uses a galvanized steel ladder frame not dissimilar from a Ford Model A’s. SCC welded in triangular gussets where the crossmembers met the main frame rails, while also reinforcing the crossmember under the new transmission. The 4/4 uses a sliding-pillar front end, where the spindles slide vertically when deflected, a system that Lancia later adapted for its groundbreaking Lambda of the 1920s. The 4/4 was originally built with lever-action shock absorbers; SCC installed new SPAX adjustable tube-type shocks. The Morgan uses semi-elliptical leaf springs at each corner, the rear ones re-arched by SCC. Bill kept the stock disc/drum brake setup intact.
In the usual sense of the word, this is not a restored car, and is believed to have never been repainted. Wilson kept meticulous logbooks documenting every episode of maintenance and parts purchase. Bill spot-painted some locations on the 4/4 that had to be touched up, and buffed out areas that appear to have spots of incipient rust. Bill says the body is rust free and that the undercarriage “looks great.” He had the rear bench seat–it’s perched above the rear axle, the occupants overlooking the cockpit–redone with vinyl upholstery by SCC, using most of the original horsehair stuffing.
Plainly put, Bill loves his Morgan. “The changes have made it a lot more driveable,” he explained. “It was tough to keep up with modern traffic. The previous engine was almost dangerous on the freeways, Harris is known to do good work, and makes its engines for the long haul. When it was done, I took the Morgan to Albuquerque on the freeway for the balloon festival, then looped around on back roads coming to Arizona. It’s got a folding top and I drive most of the time with the top up. It just gets so bloody hot here in the summer. Then I drive it in the morning two or three times a month. In the wintertime, we’ll take it up to the old mining towns like Globe, Superior and Miami.
“It runs great, if a little noisy,” he said. “Once in a while, somebody comes up to me and says, ‘Nice Morgan.’ Others assume it’s some kind of MG or Triumph, which makes sense, given that the steering wheel is on the right,”
Owner’s View
“I was in love with the Austin-Healey 3000 before I was old enough to drive. But it was the older, classic traditional look of the Morgan, with the motorcycle fenders, that really got me. Morgan essentially used modern engines with more horsepower than a Healey, so that was what I wanted. I’m kind of a traditionalist, but it still took years before I ordered one. I own modern autos–my wife and I just got a Tesla–but I love the concept of people who can do things with their hands and make stuff. A friend and I ran the Peking-to-Paris Rally in 2019 with a 1931 Model A. It was comparable, putting brakes on it and such while not really knowing anything about it. I was impressed with that, and the Morgan is now a hoot to drive.”–Bill Ward
