Great news, I finally had the chance to see it live – what a wonderful piece of machinery!!
Some background:
The FIRST delivered “customer” M3W ended up in Sweden being the demonstrator for the
Classics & Sportscarcentre in Vetlanda. I guess the main reason to that is that they paid for it first and has been extremely enthusiastic. Lasse (the owner) is a pure Morgan enthusiast that combines his daily work with his greatest passion, lucky, lucky him! I have been bombarding him with questions - be sure about that…
http://www.classic-cars.se/Sidor/Nyhet.aspx?Id=18As you can see in the link above Lasse and his fellow mechanic flew over to Malvern and watched the final assembly. They then drove it all the way home – a maiden tour of 1100 km in wind and heavy rain. In the link photos you can see that they still seemed to enjoy the ride pretty well dressed in full weather kit - aviation jackets covered with rain gear completed with helmets.
When I heard the news I rushed up to Vetlanda (in the middle of the deep Smaalandish woods). I were a bit nervous about seeing it live, pictures and reality does not always match…. My main concern was about size and quality, should it be too big and unbalanced in appearance or “tiny and pitiful”. But once I saw it all my doubts were dispersed. As some people already have said it looks even better in the flesh. The size is just perfect! Doesn't it look great together with the other beauties in the pictures below?
To enter or to get out of the M3W were no problem, the width of seat and comfort were much greater than expected. Pedal setup matched me very well and the worries about to narrow position of pedals – forget it! Are you able to drive a classic Mini? Then this is even better (as long as you leave your wool lined winter wellies for other purposes).
Quality of welding looked OK and the front wheel setup/suspension looked very well dimensioned and sturdy. The interior fulfilled my high expectations and the only thing I miss is an extra (hidden) electric socket to use for navigator/mobile charger (I intend to go for some long trips along unknown windy roads far away from civilisation).
Unfortunately there was no chance to drive it yet for customers, paper work needs to be completed (luckily no weight issues in Sweden). But of course it was fired up – seriously, you can not stop yourself from smiling when that two litre awakens (well maybe my GF/mother-in-law can
). If you look for maximum attention you will be a bit disappointed but if you plan to enjoy the grunt by driving for hours – this is the perfect noice/melody volume level.
This being a car built under some time pressure of course it still have some small points to be refined. The ones I found were issues that I guess already is solved in today’s production. The “biggest” issue was the very little clearance between cylinder cooling fins and frame – a couple of extra mills will solve that.
Mine is ordered in Silver arrow (same as picture) and tan leather – looking forward to bring that classic looking three wheeler home to my garage when the snow
has started to melt in 2012. Until then, cheers
