Geneva brings out my inner middle-aged petrolhead

GENEVA’S a great place to pretend you’re rich and middle-aged.

Not only is it full of banks and infused with a sense of order and tidiness, but it’s also just about the only place in Europe where you can broaden your already sagging waistline with entire shops dedicated to Toblerone. Oh, and once a year there’s a show stuffed with shiny new supercars too.

I’ve just jetted back from my first ever visit to something that ought to be on every car fan’s bucket list. The Geneva Motor Show is where you go to take the pulse of the motoring world because so many manufacturers use it to launch new cars, and it’s where the European Car of the Year gets announced (congratulations Vauxhall, by the way).

Really I ought have been sensible and reported back faithfully to your Champion-reading chums what the new Renault Scenic’s like – but I failed because I got distracted by the shiny supercars. You would too, given the choice between a Scenic and the new Porsche 911 Turbo S.

So I ended up pretending to be rich, middle aged and with just one question – which one car would I forgo the Easyjet flight for and drive back to Blighty? One of the show’s big stars – the Bugatti Chiron – is out straight away because its makers have wimped out of making it the world’s fastest production car by limiting its top speed to (just) 261mph. It’s 11mph faster than a Golf GTI and nearly seven times as powerful – but when it comes down to it it’ll still lose you a game of Top Trumps.

Ford’s GT gives just as much visual theatre for a fraction of the price but the mid-engined arrival that really won me over was Honda’s new NSX. Not only does it use clever hybrid technology to go fast in a vaguely eco-friendly way, but it looks stunning in the flesh. The Nineties original might have been a flop here, but I really hope this one does better.

The NSX is an amazing bit of kit – but the one car that really won me over was a small sports car made not by robots in Japan, but craftsmen in Worcestershire. Morgan’s EV3 might only be a one-off show car for now but I really hope they make it; it’s essentially the slightly bonkers Threewheeler, but with an electric motor rather than a tuned motorcycle engine. Not only does it look completely unhinged and promise to be on the fun side of terrifying to drive, but it’s also the most compelling argument I’ve seen yet for people like me – the petrolheads – to take up eat-your-greens electric motoring.

Count me in.

Originally published in the 9 March issue of The Champion

Morgan - a traditional sort of sports car

I'VE been asked, by my new employers, to find a secondhand car for sale at one of Britain's hundreds of classic car dealers and take it for a test drive. Will this suit the bill?

It's a 1997 Morgan +4 and if you're interested - which, if you like reading Life On Cars, you probably will be - it's yours for £24,500. Yes, I know that's the same sort of money as a showroom fresh Focus ST, a brand new Toyota GT-86 or a gleaming Golf GTI, but this is a much more enticing prospect. This is an immaculate Morgan that belies its years because it feels as though it's only just been run in.

Regular readers will already know I've got a soft spot for traditional sports cars and what I reckon this lacks in showroom-fresh reliability and warranty it makes up by just feeling more alive somehow. On a grey day at Southport sands it looked the part, and there's something about the view down that long, louvred bonnet that makes this a motoring experience rather than just a drive.

Would I have one over a GT-86? Not if I had to use it every day - it's heavy, defiantly old fashioned and I get the feeling taking a +4 to Tesco would spoil the Morgan magic somehow. But given a sunny day and a set of windy lanes to a country pub, this would run rings around the Toyota.

I mean, just look at it...

Video: Morgan factory

SUPPOSE you were in the lucky position to have Morgan's mad Threewheeler on order.

That's the position a friend of Life On Cars is in, and on a trip to see how his Threewheeler was taking shape he recorded this video of life at the company's Malvern factory.

It gives a fascinating insight not only into how the Threewheeler - one of the best cars I've driven all year - takes shape, but also into how its more conventional four-wheeled siblings are crafted and at why Morgan is still quite unlike any other car maker in the country. Having also toured the old TVR factory in Blackpool before it closed and the Lotus plant in Norfolk earlier this year, it almost tempts me to take a trip down to Worcestershire and see it for myself.

If you're a fan of the Threewheeler but can't afford the £30,000 pricetag then you'll probably like this one...

Fire up the... Morgan Threewheeler

IT'S A new model for the Worcestershire-based sports car builders but not in the conventional sense.

By ditching a rear wheel Morgan are revisiting territory they first trod a century ago, when the company appealed to the newfangled worlds of motoring and biking by fitting tiny little two-seaters with V-twin engines and minimal bodywork. Think of the new Threewheeler, then, as a remake of one of Britain’s oldest automotive adventures.

You’d think that’d make the Threewheeler a frantic bit of fun and it is - but only when you’re happy for it come out to play. Admittedly, it’s not a car you’d ever want to take to Waitrose and if it rains you WILL get wet but for such an outlandish and overt bit of automotive engineering it’s remarkably civil, and it’ll dawdle along as long as you like.

But plant your foot to the floor in just about any gear and the so-bonkers-it’s-brilliant Threewheeler unleashes its considerable firepower in an explosion of noise and speed, which you’re all the more aware of because the wind’s hitting you straight in the face and because absolutely everyone for miles around is looking at you. If they aren’t, they’ll definitely hear you coming.


Despite being friendlier and more manageable than I could’ve have hoped for - at first you’ll wonder where those beautiful wire wheels at the front are, but you get used to it - it is completely unlike anything I’ve driven before. It is a sort of cross between the open-air buzz of a microlight and the vintage style of a Sopwith Camel fighter plane with the deep-throated roar of an old TVR and the sheer punch of a motorbike thrown in.

So it’s my kind of car and - at £30,000 - actually cheaper than the more conventional four-wheelers Morgan fans already know and love.

A full feature on the Threewheeler will appear in the Spring edition of Gr8Life Magazine.

The Morgan Threewheeler is just a little bit mad. That's why I love it

IT'S a little bit like walking through Liverpool One on a busy Christmas Eve naked. Or at least, that's what I imagine it's like.

That's the thing with the Morgan Threewheeler, because you're cold, you're exposed and - although you wouldn't want to admit it - just a little bit liberated. Oh, and absolutely everybody, for miles around, will be looking at you. Jaws drop to the floor. Morgan's latest motor is marvellous for all sorts of reasons, but it's emphatically not a car for anyone who's a bit self-conscious.

The photoshoot Champion photographer Martyn Snape and I did with the Moggy last week for our sister magazine GR8Life was a nightmare, because the Threewheeler's got the same crowd-pulling punch as anything Ferrari or Lamborghini make. In fact I'd argue it's got more, because a Ferrari is at least vaguely familiar whereas a three-wheeled vintage sports car with no roof, no doors and no windscreen isn't. Every time we got the shot set up, someone would wander over with a smartphone and start snapping away themselves.

A leather-clad biker in his middle ages asked us how many numbers on that week's Euromillions he'd need to afford one. Two rotund ladies jokingly offered to pose on the bonnets, Page Three style. A talkative toddler demanded that his equally curious dad found out what this strangely styled car was.

All this from a small sports car that hadn't even been started up.

When you do you realise it makes a bizarrely brilliant contribution to road safety - the S&S motorbike engine, mounted right at the front, is so loud that no pedestrian anywhere could possiby argue “Oh, I never heard it coming”. It is so intoxicatingly and defiantly loud that I have no idea how it got passed by the EU noise boffins in Brussels, but I'm glad it did.

It's not really a car in any conventional sense but a sort of automotive adventure in which you're always the lead actor, playing the role of a plucky British action hero who spends his days bumbling noisily down the country lanes to solve crimes committed at quaint country pubs. Naturally, said hero can't help being a bit of a showoff.

What's it like to drive a £30,000 three-wheeled sports car which looks a bit like a cross between a Blower Bentley and First World War fighter plane? Tune in next week when it gets the full Life On Cars road test treatment...

Prepare to fire up the... Morgan Threewheeler

IF you think three-wheelers are best encapsulated by Del Boy's van then you obviously haven't seen what's on the way from Morgan.

Daringly styled, proudly patriotic and just a little bit mad, it's hard to tell whether the Morgan Threewheeler is a car at all, because it's missing a wheel and it isn't powered by a car engine. Nor is it every day that a company announces it's putting its very first model back into production - that's like Ford replacing the Focus with the Model T - but then Morgan isn't your average car company. It thrives on doing things differently.

Get your head around it having an odd number of wheels and it's business as usual for the proudly British firm, because while the Edwardian styling is a throwback to the three-wheelers which kick-started the company into business, underneath the skin it's very 21st century, packing its punch from a V-Twin Harley Davidson engine that's been breathed on by American tuners S&S. Like watching The King's Speech on an iPad, it's anachronistic but suprisingly effective.

A Morgan spokesperson said:

"When did you last regard a journey by motor car as an adventure? The Morgan 3 Wheeler is launched to bring the fun and passion back to personal transport. Lift the safety catch from the 'bomb release' starter, hear the massive twin cylinders detonate and choose your favourite destination.

"The iconic design of the Morgan Threewheeler has been updated with 21st Century technology. The powertrain is a V Twin fuel injected engine mated to a Mazda 5 speed (and reverse) gearbox. This provides smooth 'get in and drive' convenience with the thrill of extreme performance. The car is a fusion of old and new."

Southport-based Lifes Motors, who act as the region's main dealer for Morgan, reckon it'll be available for sports cars fans to try from July, and with an expected before-tax price of £25,000 it's promising to provide offer a completely different way to get your automotive kicks.

So are three wheels better than four? We'll let you know when we drive it...

Morgan's 1920s three wheeler is the perfect car for 2011

MORGANS. You either get them, or you don't.

Why, when you can get your sports car thrills from a poised Porsche Boxster or BMW Z4, would you want a car crafted from wood by chaps in the Malvern Hills, topped off with a Thirties throwback body and lashings of chrome? Well, I would for starters.

I was lucky enough to drive one last year, and I loved the utterly alive steering feel, the grunt of the exahust note and the evocative view down the bonnet, and it seems, given the length of the firm's waiting list, that so do lots of you. But to condemn the century-old carmaker as a company which just forgot to take its older models out of production is to dismiss what I reckon could be one of next year's most exciting driving experiences.

As much as I love the evocative idea of Morgan's factory being a glorified garden shed full of plucky British craftsmen nailing old cars together over a cup of tea amid a mist of timbery smells, I know the reality's a lot more space-age than that.

They've not only developed the LifeCar, which blends state of the art aerodynamics with trendy hybrid technology, but also equip their more expensive models not with any old engines, but sophisticated BMW Motorsport powerhouses designed by white-coated scientists in Germany.

But it's their decision to take their oldest design of all - the three-wheeler from the Twenties - and put it back into production that I'm most looking forward to, because when it does go on sale next year it will be the world's wackiest take on making smaller, greener cars.

The aptly named Morgan Threewheeler will weigh half a ton and will keep Greenpeace happy because it has a 1.8 litre motorbike engine, but more importantly it'll look and drive unlike any other car on the market. It's a car that looks like a cross between a Sopwith Camel and a vintage Grand Prix racer, minus a back wheel.

Stirling Moss, who owned one of the originals, said his was “a great babe magnet”. I rest my case.

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.

Everybody loves a Morgan

FEW things are more embarrassing than stalling, but I think I've found one. Stalling a bright red sports car - with the roof down - on a busy high street.

Luckily, it's a fate I've just narrowly avoided.

Morgan's 4/4 is a sports car from the old school and - thanks to a blend of luck and being annoyingly persistent - I somehow managed to blag a road test for GR8 Life, the glossy sister magazine of The Champion.

I won't go too much into what it's like to drive - you'll have to read the write up to find out - but it's about as far removed from family hatchback motoring as you can imagine, especially in some of its quirkier charms.

The indicators being on the right (i.e. wrong) side you'll get used to, but what I found trickiest of all was the endearingly unique handbrake, which took me pretty much the entire drive to master.

Taking any unfamiliar motor out onto the streets can be a little daunting at first, no matter how much you revise the controls beforehand, but threading a scarlet red roadster which you only clapped eyes on 20 minutes earlier is in another league.

But I don't think anyone cared, because they loved the 4/4. Other drivers get aggravated if you're in other flashy sports cars, but become a Morgan man and they're suddenly prepared to forgive anything.

I'm just lucky stalling on Lord Street wasn't one of them...

Read my thoughts on the Morgan 4/4 in next week's Champion and in the winter edition of GR8 Life, due out in December.