Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing Another "Why Do they Do it"

Fitting seat suppports this morning it became clear that the ply floor had sagged and the centre of the dip is the pressure point caused by the protruding 10mm of nut.

I find it so very hard to understand the mentality that didn't think through the consequence of putting the seat directly onto the floor. Or perhaps they just didn't think it mattered.

Anyway 15mm seat rails now in place, photo to follow once the Dynamat is down.

As upsetting as it is I think maybe we have to accept that things are not as they used to be. It gives me no pleasure at all to say I will never buy another new Morgan, a used one perhaps (but I am delighted with the one I have, I have learned never to say never). I say this having bought 2 new Morgans, one was handed over with a headlight pointing high up to the sky, on removal of the headlamp rim I found a piece of ash offcut used to jamb the bowl in place where the securing lug had sheered off, on the other new car I was flagged down on the way home to be advised I had no brake lights, I looked suspecting a seized brake light switch and found both brake light wires wrapped around the brake pipe next to the switch which was indeed seized on. Both cars had been built, passed factory inspection and supposedly had PDI's carried out at two (different) main Morgan dealers......what do we do, who do we blame?.....I fixed both problems myself, neither were difficult but one was a 2002 +8 costing nearly £40K and the other was a 2008 4 seater which was over £40K, is this acceptable? would we take it from a Tin Top main dealer? of course not. I am still to work out why we just shrug and accept 'oh well, its Morgan' and smile, we must all really love these cars?

Thats an interesting comment SJ. I have been contemplating a new Morgan, but after reading all the problems associated with new from factory cars, I will not be buying one. So The MMC have lost another customer, but I doubt if they care a toss. I think that they are turning out too many cars, for the number of employees involved and that impacts on quality. The warning signs are there but I am not sure anyone have enough will power to pulll the quality issue around. Sad days.

Interesting the new workshop Williams are building. To pre delivery check new Morgans being exported to China !
The Chinese expect faultless cars .

Understandable reaction, I had this very same discussion with a fellow Morgan owner (TMer as well) and we both agreed that if we were ever in the market for a new Morgan we would prefer to buy a bent near new one and have Kevin Vernon at Tudor Motors build it for us. Its a sad reflection on the factory when a specialist repairer can and does turn out higher quality cars, anyone who has had or seen a chassis up rebuild done there, and I have seen a few, would back his quality. I have no connection just a paint rectification customer of his, but I would trust my cash to him and I have been in the trade all my working life, never in body trades mind you ;-). A well sorted used example would be my recommendation Neil, my current car a 2008 +4 was bought used from SGT, not one single fault (except for a paint problem which was not the cars fault) on it in over 2 years and close to 20K miles and I love it to bits, the very best Morgan I have ever owned.

I posted this on the other "Why do they do this?" thread:

Sadly Peter, the things you mention are typical of what I was trying to say on TM >12 months ago. If you integrate these sort of things with the M3W story we've seen unfolding on TM over the past 18 months, then IMHO it just doesn't portray the "high quality, hand built by craftsman" and "100 years of engineering excellence" image that MMC tries to market itself as. It's more an image of "built by blokes in sheds" ... "blokes who've been grandfather trained" ... "blokes who don't care much for the constraints of those newfangled quality control systems". So the customer gets what he gets, pays a premium for it, and has to enjoy being the fettler, or beta tester if it's a new model. Oh, and of course graciously accept that he is privileged to be in this position.

Reading the further contributions above, I would add that I too wouldn't buy a new Morgan to replace "Monte". The cost to change for an unknown quantity with the current quality concerns is just not worth it to me. I'm sure that there will be those out there who would come to the factory's defence and claim that I just don't get the Morgan proposition. Well may be I don't, and may be to quote NeilM's words the factory don't give a toss whether I buy a new one or not. But how many times can they continue to say that before it starts to become an issue? Perhaps with a burgeoning Chinese market, it may never be a problem... and Williams Morgan will do very nicely ensuring quality products arrive in the Far East

SJ and other posters - the message I have learnt from TM is "do not buy new" ....buy second hand when all the issues (or hopefully most of them) have been fixed.

My "new" 4/4 drove far far better than the new factory Demo I drove....!!!!

Whilst I accept there are issues with some customers new cars (and here I am only referring to 4 wheelers), it would be interesting and wise to put this into context. In other words we all hear of those with issues, be it factory build fault or not but do not necessarily hear from the satisfied customers who have no issues. So it would be interesting to know the percentage of traditional cars that have issues built each year, before making judgements on overall build quality. I do however agree that just bolting seats to the floor without considering it bending the runners and floor is nonsensical, as are some other issues already highlighted. Perhaps these should be fed back to the factory to their customer services, to give them an opportunity to rectify for the future.

Tried that Adrian, emails and even a registered letter went ignored, finally managed to make an appointment for them to inspect the car, drove over from Leicester to Malvern (and I was still working back then so took a day off) only to be advised that the only person available to inspect the car had been called away to an offsite meeting so could I re-book? It was at that stage I sort of gave up. My nearest dealer was superb in their support and went much further than I could reasonably expect given that they had not sold the car, the dealer who sold me it ceased trading shortly afterwards. I would love to support the factory and write glowing reports but sadly that's not the customer experience I have had, I would like to think I have just been unlucky however.....?

I was looking at the Handmade interview with Steve Morris last night and there was a lot said about quality control which was at variance with the comments here. My car was built in 89 and after all these years of ownership nothing has dropped off but there have been two water pumps ,a broken indicator stalk, two sets of front wheel bearings and a leaky radiator. I've replaced lots of things to improve the car but none of them were the result of mechanical failure. With 1100 cars being made I hope that there are a lot of satisfied owners out there and to be fair a quick trawl through other dedicated sites will reveal lots of unhappy major marque customers too.