3 stunning motor cars!

Cheers,

An amazing sight thanks for posting :-)

Seeing all three together, it is difficult to pick a favourite. What is interesting is to see how they tried to alter the front end to improve performance over the production run of the 3 cars.

Last year when I first saw a Williams and Pritchard bodied pre war BMW 328 I started to appreciate unpainted aluminium in a way that had previously escaped me, however it is interesting to note, as I understand it, that the green one, built initially for Chris Lawrence to use, probably lays claim as the most original since to my knowledge it has not been substantially crash damaged as the red car was, by Gordon Spice in 1964, nor been substantially fire damaged as the unpainted one was in the late 60's early 70's.

Too bad all three are out of my price range.... for now !

Now that the 3 SLRs are all in the UK, it has been easier to piece together much of their history.

The red one is sometimes known as the first and the last of the Morgan SLRs: built originally by Chris Lawrence, severely damaged almost at once by first owner Gordon Spice, and returned to Chris who rechassis'd and rebuilt the car after he had finished the third of the cars, the green one which was his own for many years.

The middle one, the silver car, was sadly destroyed by a fire and the car rebuilt by a different bodyshop. The construction of the body is rather different from the original, in that it is easier to remove whereas the original construction was separate strips of aluminium rivetted to the chassis and welded and worked to make the single body shell. A major issue if/when there is any body damage!

If one gets to degree of originality in a non legal sense (perhaps weighing original metal in the car?) as the red one spent 29 years in California, in a good climate, the order would probably be red, green, silver.

Nonetheless, all three cars have FIA papers and are formally original. It is a real pleasure to see them all out at once, and now several times all three in the same race. There was a magic scene, sadly not to my knowledge captured on film, last year at a race at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium when in qualifying the three cars led out the pack and were the first three down the famous Eau Rouge Corner. A stunning, exciting and unique sight!