MORGAN MEMORIES

In 1969 I bought a 1959 Morgan Plus 4, with one of the first Lawrence Tunes, that had been shunted on the race track and got it back on the road that summer. I still have it. On a good day, back then, it topped 126mph. I have had many adventures in it: cross-country on Salisbury Plain to an RV for a promotion exam; and on honeymoon in the south of France, when the hood went AWOL – a speed cop was very understanding when I put my foot down and pointed to some heavy rain coming up fast behind. (The hood I made myself from ship’s canvas when working for the Missions to Seafarers in Holland.)

The photograph (above) shows the pram arrangements when my eldest daughter was a baby; she travelled in the pram top wedged on the suitcase in the compartment behind the front seats (there was a bottle warming in the tool box under the bonnet). She could just peep out if awake.

I commuted to theological college in Oxford from Woodstock in time for morning chapel when training for the ministry. Later, in my North Yorkshire parishes, I would dash between services, roof down, fully robed, with my organist who was a nun – we certainly turned a few heads.

On another occasion, when asked to join a procession of classics in the main arena of the Great Yorkshire Show, there was a flurry of petticoats as my parish magazine editor almost hurdled the variegated hedge in her keenness to have a ride – it still pulled the ladies as it had at art school, always carrying a brolly in case of rain at traffic lights. I also drove from London to Devon with my labrador and a litter of eight pups and only the handbrake from Salisbury.

For the petrolheads, it still boasts twin Weber 42s; the original TR engine, like my grey Fergie; Cobra wheels on the back, standard on the front; optional hardtop, like TOK 258 [The drive of your life, September issue]; fold-flat hinges on the screen; but I think wind deflectors will be a better addition, as I mount the aero screens on a shaped scuttle top with two curved cowls. The only problem was that after exiting an overnight channel ferry, one carb kept flooding and I had to coax the car up hills. I discovered the vibration of the ferry had jammed the float chambers open – it had started easily being kept warm aboard.

May Morgan long continue to uphold traditional motoring. Revd Toddy Hoare Oxfordshire