So many thoughtful and insightful reflections in this thread! If I may pick up on Simon's Wabi-Sabi analogy, which I found very compelling, this leaves me with a kind of puzzle: it seems many of the "imperfections" of Morgans are not just something to put up with but actually directly part of their appeal. For instance, I absolutely love the very stiff and bouncy ride, captured perfectly by Luddite's description of the LM Bentley bobbing and weaving down a country lane. I imagine that this is shared by a lot of Trad owners. But why then the inclination to try to improve the ride with, say, better dampers up front or an SSL kit in the rear? Doesn't that just risk undermining the very thing that makes it appealing in the first place? (I ask as someone who feels the "improvement" bug coming on and wondering if it isn't wiser to just leave well enough alone, as +8Rich evidently has done). Or is there some kind of subtle pleasure in taking a flawed but beloved object and, well, making it just a bit (but not too much) less flawed?
...in terms your question about 'improvement', I'm going to add to that the Japanese art of
Kintsugi (金継ぎ), sometimes know as "golden repair"; again, in basic terms, (and with apologies to our Japanese visitors for trying to ineloquently capture another meaningful philosophical concept!) Kintsugi is "the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise." (borrowing that quote from wiki).
Strangely, I've always felt that when people change, alter and, perhaps, improve their Morgans, they are carrying out their own act of kintsugi... not trying to erase the history or disguise it but instead embrace the flaws and potentially improve on those areas.
Perhaps Dave's next book should be
Zen & the Art of Morgan Maintenance?
