Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms MMC's longer term future

If I'm honest, this is what I'm waiting for.

You,me and countless others!!!!!

MMC will have to move with legislation. They already seem to be doing that with the recent grant for e-vehicle development. Safety features is an evergrowing area though so that is where I see potential hurdles. Many aspects of design/visual effect will have to be changed. Wingtop lights were dropped some time back.
Side impact protection......
Airbags......
Roll hoops......
ABS/Traction control........
Autonomous systems like braking, lane control etc..
All possible in a trad but at a cost in £ and looks.
Superform wings is another example of forward progress. The aero chassis cars is several years down the line too.
Remember the Rutherford rear suspension hoop being adopted by MMC?
There is definitely scope to expand development both in design and manufacturing.
The phrase "but we've always done it like that" is one that used to wind me up when I moved to another company years ago.

Now there is a really thoughtful answer. Personally I reckon there will be Morgan enthusiasts around since a Morgan, particularly a Trad, isnt a performance car in modern terms. Its a cruiser, a sort of 4 wheeled British Harley, for bimbling down country lanes on sunny summer afternoons. Its the speed freeks who wont be able to enjoy themselves not Morgan owners.

And my experience of technology is that predictions of the future are almost always either wrong or much delayed. Uber taxis might arrive but it wont be 2050 and it wont be outside the big cities.

HMG financed De SWMBO and Rootes Linwood and Bathgate and Halewood. If anything a government grant is a warning sign.

And as for "MMC think that", well words fail me.

But that really isnt the issue anyway. What determines the future are us, the customers plus the legislative situation in the countries they sell to. I was interested to hear in the recently posted interview video that MMC export 60% of what they make. I wonder what will be the attitude of other governments to a Trad with an electric motor

P.S. Weird. I have typed in the name of that american sports car made in belfast and the software has changed it to SWMBO. Why? Whats the link?

You've been hacked, Howard..!

The export figure is around 70% I'm led to believe.

I think I'd be up for a hybrid Trad too, especially a reasonably simple one devoid of all the unnecessary 'bolt-on's' within the cockpit. Regenerative braking, ABS etc is fine. Driver assist/lane change shizzle is a no, thanks.

I wonder if the local Highways & councils could arrange some DRS zones out of corners onto a straight road..?

Hmmmm..

I'm glad I had a trad Morgan when I did, the thought of a clinical whirring hybrid Morgan leaves me cold. Dinosaur that I am I enjoy having an oily, smelly, noisy and quite non pc car to drive. The environmental impact of classic cars must be minuscule compared to all the commercial vehicles and trains that go unnoticed. But an easy target I guess.

I really do think that Legislation is a major future threat to MMC.

Even as a low volume producer I am sure that our Legislators will have Morgan and other low volume producers in their cross threads.

If I were MMC I would worry about changes to crash testing and of course all manner of driver aids which could in theory become compulsory.

Very little evidence if any to back up my gut feel ...but threats are there nevertheless.

If you look at what has happened to the M3W you might find your evidence. They had a hell of a job to get the M3W through Australian homologation and it is now a very expensive toy in Australia. Much of what was required for Australia plus a few other things such as OBD have now been mandated for European Euro 4 homologation. The M3W is now being sold in Euro 4 style and owners that want to can pay for the bits to reverse to the Euro 3 style.

I should think there will be more people offering services like this in the coming years:

https://www.electricclassiccars.co.uk/