You could describe the British carmaker Morgan Motor Company Ltd. as a conservative-minded company – and not just because of the way their cars look.
The technical base currently used in Morgan cars dates back to the pre-WWII era. Therefore, when Morgan announced earlier today that it would be moving on to a new aluminum vehicle platform, the news was nothing short of revolutionary.
The first Morgan 4-4 rolled off the assembly lines in the faraway 1936. Since then, the chassis has survived through countless minor improvements and tweaks while remaining essentially the same. When the company unveiled its Plus Six roadster concept (watch the video) this spring, many suspected that the car had something fresher at its core than the 83-year-old chassis. They were right.
The new platform is called CX-Generation, and it has about 1% in common with the old one, the manufacturer proudly claims. Developed over the course of three years, it necessitated expanding the company’s engineering department to three times its former size – from 10 to 30 staff members.
The new architecture mostly utilizes lightweight and practical aluminum, but retains the marque’s iconic woodwork around the driver’s cockpit. Aside from having twice as much torsional rigidity as the old platform, the new one also weighs 97 kilograms (214 lbs) less.
Morgan has three models on the current lineup: the 4/4, the Plus 4, and the Roadster – but all three will vanish from the market in 2020. The model that will come to replace them remains a bit of a dark horse right now, with no technical specs or visual cues to go by. The Plus Six concept may provide the basis, but it comes equipped with a 3.0-liter BMW I6 TSI engine linked to an eight-speed ZF transmission. The company says the final model that will go into production will have manual transmission and ship with engines smaller than three liters in size.