I neither want nor have a bonnet belt on my Morgan, though I can see they have a potential purpose other than looking a bit racy in the vintage sense. I can often arrive home after a good run over less than perfect roads hereabouts to find at least one of my bonnet catches unlatched due to chassis flex on my trad, and just to add, my +8`s chassis has no obvious corrosion issues.
Another thought. On the increased safety of bonnet belts is that on my Mog and I suspect many others, the piano hinge holding both halves of the bonnet together is fixed to the wooden frame at the back by a couple of rather small wood screws, and at the front held by a couple of equally small diameter set screws &nuts. I suspect given the age and condition of the frames woodwork etc on the average older Morgan, it might not be unusual in a front end collision for the bonnet fixings to be potentially dislodged sending the bonnet rearward.... If your Mog has a full windscreen perhaps less of an issue, but if running with Brooklands screens....Hmm..?
As for the vintage illusion.... I am right into that... T`was following a circa 20`s open top Bentley down the Loch Tay road on my m/cycle, watching the pilot`s inputs required to keep it under control as it hopped and skipped over the road surface, taking a fair bit of steering correction in the process and thinking "I want some of that," but a vintage Bentley or in fact any vintage machine capable of sporting performance, was outside my pay grade... Shrug. However having read and collected the classic press for a decade or so , I was reasonably acquainted with the Morgan marque, which seemed likely to provide a reasonable degree of a vintage driving experience, without the initial expense of buying a true vintage car that was capable of circa 100MPH performance +. The other attractions were related to Morgans truly vintage suspension systems, hand built craftsmanship, heritage and history relating to Morgan, also disc brakes seemed to add a bit of a justifiable performance extra, all that, but minus the maintenance costs related to true vintage engines and drive trains...Thus it was to be a Morgan for me.
I did have thoughts that a really nice engined turned alloy dash would look the business in my Mog, but never got round to that, Oh, and in terms of looks, I also bought into getting rid of the of the C prefix on it`s number plate, by replacing it with a three letter three digit plate.... So what that says about my personality flaws...? Shrug.. (-:
As ever, each to their own..
