I suppose it depends on your driving style Tim. Certainly there are enough gears and a slick enough gearchange to promote fun driving on country roads. On motorways and dual carriageways though if just cruising at the legal limit in sixth you would be out of the torque band at 1500rpm and there simply wouldn't be enough available to overtake cleanly or compensate for a slight hill. Changing down one or likely two gears would obviously solve the problem but that defeats the point of the outstandingly high top gear ratio to allow the published low fuel consumption figures. Indeed one of the reviews does suggest that the sixth gearing is simply there to appease the EU, whereas to my mind a six speed box should provide six practical gears.
I'm well aware of this high gearing issue on my Roadster which also requires a change down from sixth to overtake cleanly on motorways despite having more available torque, particularly at the 2000rpm the legal limit represents. The Plus Four's sixth gear is nearly 30% higher still, has less torque and slightly higher weight!
This is where the auto - would be the better option?
3rd gear on the auto is very similar in terms of revs and mph to 2nd in the manual box.
Changing down a gear on the motorway @ 70mph - to overtake seamlessly is nonsensical (interestingly with my Roadster - you certain don't have to do that) and being in 4th or 5th "just in case" also defeats the objective?
I like the "involvement" a manual gearbox gives to the Morgan driving experience, however, with modern engines (turbo boosted in particular) the auto gearbox - may be the better solution? They work better together?
Auto - you would also have somewhere to put your left foot
