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The year was 1908, the place was the Malvern College workshop. H.F.S. Morgan had begun his first tri-car with the assistance of engineer Mr. Stephenson-Peach. The Morgan Motor Company in Malvern Link, Worcestershire, England, continues to make cars the very old-fashioned way. Not just by hand, but with wood, as has been the tradition since the early days of the firm. A steel rail chassis is fitted with a wood frame and then the sheetmetal, either aluminium or steel, is hand wrapped around the wood. The trike at the bottom and top left of the collage, as well as the main photo above, is a 1932 Super Sports. Powered by an externally mounted sidevalve, JAP V-twin, each cylider has its own exhaust pipe running along-side the body. The rear wheel is driven by chain and displacement is approximately one liter. The trike in the top right corner is a 1938 model that was rescued from a barn in 1995 and restored. The bottom right Morgan is of an unknown year, but, tradition at Morgan being what it is this example could be from the 1950s onward. These Morgan trikes and a pair of four-wheeled variants were all gathered at the third annual Children's Museum Vintage Gran Prix at Indianapolis Raceway Park. They competed in the pre-war and 1946-1963 production-based classes. The field consisted of a 1952 and a '53 MG TD, two 1937 Morgan Four-4s, and a 1935 Riley Imp. Needless to say the low-slung 1938 trike (top right) steadily pulled away from the rest of the field with narry a squeak from the skinny little tires to take top honors. |