Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms John Sheally II

That sounds ominous. 🙂 There are many internet searches going on at the moment, using "Sheally" as its key word. This is a public forum and its posts appear on each of those searches. Allow me to explain. You and I, as venerable as we think we are, are too young to remember what Sheally did in his days of glory. He was almost a generation before us. Historians invariably gloss over the real Morgan story. I will try to explain the Sheally era in as few words as possible. My sources are pint-derived, rather before all these people passed.

Despite constructed perceptions, Peter Morgan went through many trials as owner. His father passed in 1957, leaving an Estate divided equally among the many siblings, merely indicating that his only son, Peter, would run the Company. But his (older) sisters' husbands had no confidence in PM to do so. Peter was forced to buy all his sisters out simultaneously, leaving him far less-than-cash-flush by the 60s. Sadly, at the same time, the UK had largely lost interest in Morgans, expressed by the French refusing the first attempt of a Morgan to enter LeMans. They all elt the car was too old fashioned. A large loan from his then wife culminated in PM's loss of his sole majority and the decisions that lead to the 2019 sale. However, Morgans remained popular overseas. Some years the USA took as much as 80-90% of Morgan production.

During these dire days, a brash and bizarre young fellow appeared. A born promoter. An American. He was dubbed "Mr. Morgan" on both sides of the Atlantic. He won every race he entered. He restored Morgans to a level never seen before, albeit in the American style. He was always in the news and he put Morgans there constantly as well. This was absolutely needed. PM was anything but a showman. Far too elegant for that!. Sheally especially, and others were key until the time Peter came up with the Plus 8 at the end of the 1960s, despite the closure of the American market for many years (1971-1976) until the Bill Fink modifications. The USA never again achieved the same sales importance until 2005/6.

John would do bizarre things to promote mogs, anything really. He wrote books, chromed brake drums and one of the most famous promotions, which he wrote of in his book Pride of the British, was to go from ocean to ocean in his Super Sports Three Wheeler. He began near his home in Suffolk Virginia and when he met the crowd on the West side in California, he symbolically shot his steed through the engine which provoked even more Media attention! That one trip humbles any such trek in history. I am sure it inspire Charles Morgan's similar trek from Chicago in a M3W with his wife...to successfully publicize THAT model 50 years later. The younger Mr. Morgan must have heard of this Sheally feat ALL his life! You have your Morgan because of John Sheally, or at least PM thought so. The model industry even made 1000s of replicas of it which sit on mantels around the world.

Most people live long past the days of their maximum glory, which should not dim the glory but too often does.

gmg

P.S. That trike, which I had the honor of driving, went though many iterations as John often restored it, most significantly when it burned at one time