No automaker in the world stands so firmly on the side of tradition as does tiny Morgan, Britain's oldest surviving sports car builder. What other company has brought sliding-pillar front suspensions with them into the 21st century, or ash-framed bodies?
The signature front-end design is rooted in history, too. Each of Morgan's current products, from the timeless Roadster and Plus 4 to the futuristic LIFECar2 hybrid and EvaGT prototype, wears a version of the waterfall grille introduced in 1954, the year Elvis Presley recorded his first two songs and the U.S. carried out A-bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.
The grille introduced with the Plus 4 was part of Morgan's last major redesign, and it represented a big shift in appearance. Previously, Morgans had worn flat, inverted-horseshoe-shaped grilles, flanked by separate headlamps. When, the story goes, the supply of headlamps began to run out, the front end was changed. The headlamps were now mounted on the end of straight tubes on the inner valances, between the grille and the fenders. The radiator was moved back under the hood, behind a flat grille that featured a chromed, half-moon shape at its top.
Company chairman Peter Morgan disliked the look, and besides, Morgan had overlooked new regulations that required headlamps to be mounted higher as of January 1, 1954. So, just a few months after what's now called the ''interim'' car had entered production, Morgan switched to a ''high cowl'' look. Headlamps were carried higher on the valances, mounted in streamlined pods, and the grille bars were given a graceful arc. The shell surrounding the bars was given a more rounded shape, too.
The grille itself consists of 16 chromed vertical bars, permanently attached to a support and mounted in the grille shell as a unit. Combined with its surrounding cowl, the look is both streamlined and sporting, and recalls the purposeful front ends of pre-war race cars.
The ''Plus'' in Plus Four stands for the extra power provided by the Standard Vanguard inline-four and, later, the fours of Triumph's TR series. Yet no matter what resided under the center-hinged hood, from the weedy Ford L-head four of the Series II 4/4 to the mighty Rover V-8 of the Plus 8, the grille remained essentially the same. Even when Morgan introduced the more radically styled--and controversial--Aero 8 in 2001, the grille was straight out of 1954.
This article originally appeared in the September, 2010 issue of Hemmings Motor News.
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