MORGAN PLUS FOUR vs MORGAN 4/4 (2022) (1966)
How does the modern Morgan compare with a car five decades its senior?
I’M NOT SURE I CAN SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Very funny. But I’ll concede that getting these two Morgans together is a very visual demonstration of both the company’s design language and its evolutionary philosophy. A numberplate swap might just prove enough to divert your attention from the 56-year age gap between these cars. Oh, and exterior door handles used to be optional in the Malvern Hills.
SO WHAT EXACTLY AM I LOOKING AT?
In period red ’n’ black is a Sixties Morgan 4/4, with a 1.6-litre 4cyl Ford engine sending 75bhp and 98lb ft to the rear wheels via a 4spd gearbox. While its H-pattern is familiar, the lever sprouts from under the dashboard and takes a minute to get comfy with. In blue is a brand new Plus Four, a 2.0-litre 4cyl BMW turbo providing the rear axle with 255bhp and 258lb ft via a 6spd manual.
I’M GUESSING THEIR PERFORMANCE DIFFERS
With more than three times the power, the Plus Four is the quicker car. But the 4/4 carries barely more than half its newer relation’s weight, at 660kg, and with skinnier tyres and a surprisingly torquey old engine, it moves more than swiftly enough. It gives you everything with zero drama, revving with linearity around its quaint dial but delivering so much below 4,000rpm that you can exercise mechanical sympathy without stymying your pace.
AND HOW ABOUT HANDLING?
As well as smelling like it was made in the Sixties, the 4/4 brakes and steers like it too. Halting for a roundabout needs forward thinking and the wheel is overly large. But it twirls around without too much resistance and you can drive it with vigour and trust in the chassis. Despite the Plus Four’s heap of extra performance – a 5.2secs 0–62mph time is probably about half its ancestor’s – the same is true in the 2022 car. ABS helps it stop keenly, too.
SO COME ON – HOW DIFFERENT TO THEY ACTUALLY FEEL?
There’s less of a gap between them than I’d anticipated, with the experience the Plus Four delivers astonishingly faithful to a car five decades its senior. Beyond the 4/4’s wing mirrors actually being on the wings, its glovebox locking like a Victorian dresser drawer and its lack of headrests or three-point seatbelts, the interior ambience and view up the road (via the twin bonnets) is all but the same as the Plus Four’s. The newer car’s tech – Bluetooth audio, aircon, heated seats, power steering – largely operates in the ether and doesn’t have overt visual cues. And with the side screens removed these two deliver a similar level of refinement and sense of safety on a 60mph country road. Which all suggests Morgan makes the most tactful progress of any carmaker, keeping its models’ core attributes wholly intact while integrating the tech we all secretly want with real subtlety. What ho!