Hi Massi. I think I understand better now where you're coming from. So it would be a real difference to travel from the old 1800 Morgan to relatively modern times, and in other words, the Plus4 would only be halfway there from your point of view. So the path leads towards a Roadster that was never a fakir car, but offers a different kind of fun. It has seven-league boots. Even though a 3.7 is a great engine (and Roadster), I had three 3.0s and felt absolutely well motorised with each one. The Getrag gearbox in the Series 1 had the best gear ratios. That was a real plus point. However, I also quickly got used to the Ford Transit gearbox in the Series 2 and Series 3. I had no complaints about the quality of the gearshift; it was a bit more rustic than the refined Getrag in the S1, but it suited the car very well. Unfortunately, I found first gear to be much too short and fifth gear much too long, so I mostly drove in second gear and then third and fourth, except for fifth gear on the motorway. But it sounds worse than it was.
There is one point I would pay attention to, even if everyone may evaluate the effect differently. My 2008 S2 was a very nice, wonderful cruiser. It was perhaps the weakest of the three in terms of performance, but it had the most pleasant silky engine sound to my ears and nice low-end torque. The only problem was the rev hang, so you accelerate to, say, 5000 rpm from second gear and want to shift into third, but the revs stay stuck at 5000 rpm... For what feels like an eternity, and you shift into third gear at high revs and you know you're wearing out your gearbox (and you don't have any additional engine braking in the mountains just before the bend, which feels really bad) or you wait those endless seconds, at least two, and you shift like your grandmother. That was a fun killer in Series 2. Now I was one of the very few who got a new control unit from MMC through my dealer. There were more than a few threads on the subject here on TM. With the new control unit, the Roadster was transformed, it also had more power, revved up more spontaneously and rev hang was a thing of the past. But from the posts here on TM, I could see that there was only a very short window of opportunity for this new ECU. The rev hang problem was no longer of general interest because after only a short production period in 2010, Series 3 followed. I think it was rated at 230 hp, S 1 226 hp, S 2 204 hp at the time.
I had an S3 Sports without a spare wheel. The S3 was the first model with a wider front, which I personally liked very much and one reason for the change, but also the rev hang of the S2, was a major reason for me to switch. If I had got the new ECU earlier, I would have kept the S2, even though it is narrower at the front than at the rear. Unfortunately, the S3 had already been ordered. Like the S1, the S3 has no rev hang problem. The S1 was more sophisticated in terms of engine and transmission, but to be honest, it's marginal, because in any case you have more than 200 hp on approx. 940 kg, which I think is very fast.
The S3 was perhaps the one with the fewest teething problems. For example, with the S1, the sealing rings between the manifold and the catalytic converter burned out three times under warranty, each lasting only about 7,000 km. The S3 didn't have such problems. But the S3 came without a spare wheel and with a closed rear. I don't know if that was the reason, but the S3 had an unbearable exhaust roar, so I had two new, quieter silencers built locally. In my opinion, whether a car sounds nice or drones is a significant factor in enjoyment. I ordered my S3 from Melvin Rutter in UK as an LHD. When I picked it up and arrived in Cologne at night, I had a headache from the roar, regardless of whether the roof was up or down. The new silencers really made it better.
If it's an S2, that's also a good choice, and for me the most emotional choice, because I took the most beautiful trips to France and Italy with my wife in the S2, but only if you don't mind rev hang or if the car has the newer ECU. I haven't heard of any other way to eliminate rev hang because, to my knowledge, Ford had password-protected all ECUs.
My humble guess is that my improved ECU could actually have been one from the very first S3 because it was the same engine, only some pipes, perhaps from the exhaust manifold, I forgot, had a larger diameter on the S3, but as I said, my S2 also had much more dynamism and power with the new ECU.
Good luck with your car search.
PS
as you des ribe thr placement of the rev counter and the speedo in front of your sight, it should be an S1? So arround 2004/ 2005?
A very nice car.
PS2
I just remembered something else. I forgot whether the S1 had one (or two) longitudinal stabiliser bars for the leaf springs installed at the factory. Öerhaps only the S2 got one such bar, and on my S1, the cardan shaft hit the wooden panelling at the rear every time I accelerated sharply. This is not meant as a no-go, but perhaps you should install an elongated stabiliser bar on each side so that the leaf springs do not wind up under load. It's no big deal and can easily be retrofitted. Here are other members like DaveW who have much more knowledge than me but perhaps I could contribute a lttle bit.
