Originally Posted By Brian V
Originally Posted By asbojohn
So if I've read this correctly what one or two people want is MMC to spend hundreds of thousands on development of a roof as I'd guess at a minimum. mainstream manufacturers do, but do this wIthout affecting the list price of the car as £70-80k is to much.

It's a Morgan at the end or the day, and as such should never be driven wIth the roof up.


Do you think Steve Simmonds spent hundreds of thousands of pounds developing his leak free hood?

Also whilst "one or two" people want a leak free hood does that imply that the remainder would find a leak free hood on a Morgan either not an improvement or actually a backward step?

"Never driving a Morgan with a hood up" is fine for the owners who drive on nice dry days, but I would imagine that a fair few owners would like to drive the cars when they want to, not just when the weather is clement.


Brian I speak as someone who has owned 2 aeros which between them have covered I'd guess 50k miles. Driven in the snow, rain and on the occasional sunny day. They didn't leak, they would more dribble, but I'd certainly get more water in the car when I opened the door. With the roof up I'd end up driving the car with the window open as it gets too hot, or the windows steam. So I guess that then means all the AC and heating system needs redesigning.

What I'm trying to say that if you're demanding perfection then you need a car that's built with micron precision and assembled by a robot, not made of a material that will flex and assembled by a bloke with a screwdriver and hammer. Will Morgan owners accept this probably not.

The roof on the S4 aero is different to all the others aeros, with less than 200 built the development cost on the perfect roof would add significantly to overall purchase cost. Personally I'd accept the dribble over the extra few £K cost.

I don't know much about the Simmonds roof, but he operates a cottage industry and I'd guess (waits to be proven wrong) that a reasonable percentage of the cost of the roof is Steve fettling the roof for each car. He may not have spent £000's on development but I'm sure his time at the factory and working for himself will have amounts to '000s of hours with a cost of knowledge gained.

Now I'm sure MMC could do this, but production would be slowed down and cost would go up.

Very few of us are blinkered when we buy these cars and TM members have all freely commented on the foibles of Morgan ownership, indeed some members with the aid of neoprene have made an art form of tweaking.

If I wanted a convertible that didn't leak, had no soul, was designed by committee, built by robots, I'd have bought a Merc. But instead I chose to spend my money on something a little different and put up with the problems being different brings.

Oh and yes my mum does think I'm special nerd

Slowly going green