Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Plus Four, Supersport & Plus Six (CX & CXV Generation Vehicles) Safety Recall - Brakes

Sensible approach...

MB and Ferrari to name just two in recent times

Yes and as I mentioned earlier, Morgan's reaction went far beyond anything Ferrari has bothered to do.

I am sad this safety recall didnt arrive earlier . I had to drive two years with wrong brakes without reaction from my dealer or the company ( their answer was that my car was braking very well).
Now the car has much better brakes and i am able to drive wihout the question will i stop or not ?

I believe most car manufacturers are reliant upon outsourced component's such are brake and radiators and are in essence just assemblers of motor vehicles some elements in house others sub contracted purchases. The issue becomes one of design specification, quality control and inspection during assembly, adequate PDI and then what defects reporting occurs during servicing of customer vehicles thru the dealer network.

In my experience too often the Morgan infrastructure and dealerships are too ready to call something a characteristic of a Morgan 'they all do that' when on occasion it is something much more serious, as with the CX.

I would be surprised if you can simply pass it up the line in this manner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy

You can be reliant on the manufacturer of external components, you can even rely on them to select the optimum specification to benefit from their experience and specialism, but be in no doubt you own the issue.

In my world this is like moving to the cloud and assuming someone else is doing everything for you now.
What happens if they get hacked, you are probably just as stuffed if you are on their platform.
"It won't go down, 99.99% availability" so I don't need a backup (virus will encrypt and render it dead)
They have shown me their security documents so I am safe. This does not relate to your data on their system, read the small print.

If you are building a vehicle to sell under your own name then you are liable. You can contract the liability back to the supplier if you do it correctly but you still own the customer facing issue. I would trust Morgan did as they have excellent experience in doing this for years, but you still own the problem.

People never forget a failure but they also never forget someone who really makes an effort to recover from one.

All very valid points, the Firestone/Ford debacle illustrates both were caught up in the fallout and finished up compensating claimants although Firestone paid out almost double what Ford did.

The issue about cloud data is not just a case of what happens to your data, but whose data it is eg if its financial payment instruments and details of your customers can lead to serious implications and penalties,

I was taking the humanistic viewpoint and not the legal one.
Also worth remembering is that most of the CXs recalled were not suffering any problems with their brakes or rads but they obviously can't take any chances with safety so a "don't drive" notice had to be issued.

It must be almost impossible for a small manufacturer like MMC to identify a poorly made part in amongst hundreds of good ones until that part fails in use. It would require expensive laser scanners and other equipment and that would make no financial sense for 600 cars per year production. Most CXs were driving around perfectly well with no apparent issues until the recall.

When we buy a Morgan, we buy into the good and the bad of Morgan ownership. I think that MMC did a good job given it was not an internal problem to start with and they had to react as best they could.
As I see it, someone else's shoddy work has probably cost them the profit from the next couple of years of manufacturing in one fell swoop. This doesn't seem fair, regardless of the actual legal position, at least to me.

Of course, small businesses can and do have a level of QC and inspection of components, we saw that recently on a Drew car programme, where a small competition seat belt manufacturer tested a sample of each batch of materials to destruction.

I've only been around Morgan works a few times, last time was before CX production started and I don't remember seeing any inspection or QC labels on any materials or components or any test equipment being used to test samples of batches to destruction or whatever test bed criteria was appropriate., maybe its all hidden away from sight.

As the Morgan is becoming increasingly more technically sophisticated and moving further upmarket with resultant increased sales prices and introducing features like traction control, I would like to think they have done the necessary development work, set in place the QC and inspection requirement necessary.

It is Morgan that are moving away from what may have been considered an enthusiasts car (some of it as a result of every demanding regulations and legislation) to competing with more main stream products. I'm sure much of this is being driven by economics of low volume manufacture and addressing certain new sales market requirements like eg USA traction control.

As they expand into new markets and especially countries like the USA that have a litigation based culture, that Morgan do get it right as some markets would be less forgiving as Ford and Firestone found to their cost

I agree your point Barry and sorry if my wording made it sound like I was being hard on them. By dropping everything and moving to an all CX range they made a brave leap and are to be applauded for it. It also made it a critical leap and so needed to be followed through in more detail than the traditional processes?

I think they were responsible and acted reasonably quickly. I don't think their communications were particularly impressive which made it worse than it needed to be, as we saw from the noise level generated on TM.
I agree re North America being a difficult issue and wonder what would have happened. I do think that anyone buying a Morgan in the US is probably expecting a few SNAFU's as it is a very English car in that respect. Even with the modern CX.

You do have to rely on the component supplier to match their specification but Morgan still need to perform some sort of random inspection to protect themselves (and their customers). It would seem a number of owners commented on the poor feel and performance so brushing it off with a "they all do that" is actually the worst thing you can do. Lets hope one of the new peeps looks into turning the open circuit feedback process into a closed loop one.

Lets hope they don't take their eye off the existing cars out in the field in the rush to new money.