Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Father and Son Italia trip

Great road trips stick with you. I did Route 66 with my son in a Mustang convertable & really enjoyed the experience. Good luck to you Ewan & of course we want to hear your final route & see the photos

I have always been a stay at home and get on with the tasks at hand kinda guy, whereas my good lady had an adventurous streak and thus she organised and encouraged me to drive the Morgan South on three European trips from central Scotland, we did France as a tester for the 2002 24 hrs at LM, then toured a fair bit of Britany, next trip was to drive down to Andalusia where she rented a villa that we used as a base to tour the area, including a drive up to Granada to again view the Alhambra.. Our final trip was to Italy, this one different in that she decided not to book ahead, as Colin AKA Spanner Juggler of this forum, had travelled extensively in Europe and suggested to use the tourist offices in whatever town we stayed the night in to book the next nights accommodation... Of course this was in a time when mobile phones were just that and not the devices they are today, thus our maps were of the paper kind...(-: Getting pleasantly lost was something to be enjoyed causing us to discover back roads and stay in out of the way places. Our longest stay was at a Sorrento hotel in a room with a view from the balcony out over the Bay of Naples, we used it as a base for a few days to visit Pompeii and to drive the Amalfi coast road around dawn while all the tourists would still be snug in bed..(-:

We used the motorways to get down through France to Sorrento, and on the return leg took to the back roads to trip over out of the way and interesting places, which we did.

The old Mog did so very much better than expected and the most trying situation was sitting cooking in a traffic jam in a tunnel on the motorway just outside Naples with a start engine issue to the extent I did not want to shut it down, lest it failed to fire up again creating further mayhem for already frustrated drivers...!!! All in temps where Italians were fainting in the street....and to try to protect the engine from overheating, I switched the heater fan on.... ever seen makeup melt....!!! My good lady took it all as part of the adventure..

i thought I had posted pics of our Southern European trips including Italy, in the general photo gallery under the heading of Roads less travelled numbered from 1 to 6 or thereabouts, but I can not find them there now.. pity.

The old Morgan was quite the best calling card one could present we were well looked after wherever we stayed.... and were it not for my wife`s sense of adventure it would never have happened....and for sure life can be all to short.

The Mog with it`s low ground clearance was thought not to be ideal for back road travel, but it did have rather higher aspect ratio tyres than your lovely Ferrari... the main thing is that despite all my expectations of doom and disaster re the usual Morgan foibles, the old thing got us there and back on these three trips, the last of which was circa 2005, and it sits in the garage ready to repeat the process any time I might care to turn the ign key..... Sadly not to be.

I hope you have a great trip Ewan. and look forward to hearing the tales of your adventure and of course take lots of pics... (-:

Enjoy what you can and while you can seems to be a more than reasonable plan...?

I totally agree with Luddite and your sentiments, our run through Europe in the Coupe in 2017 gave us something we still talk about together now. I think it also bonded us with what had been a quite troublesome car up to that point. Yet it only broke down once (air-con compressor) and we got treated like royalty.

Now you know why we have aircon in our Plus 4. When we ordered the car they had never fitted aircon to a Plus 4 but said that the Chinese importer (just started) was insisting on it. If not the first ours was one of the first Plus 4s with aircon. For me it was a must.

When the sun is really beating down and frying the brains we put the hood up and turn on the aircon

Peter AKA Gambalungs, I ever described air con in a Trad as being about as useful as an ash tray on a m/cycle....which is still the case in central Scotland... (-: Though at the time stuck in that traffic in June perhaps 2005 a time of reportedly extreme temps in Italy up till then, I remember relating the story on eMog suggesting at that moment I would have preferred to be driving a soft top 911 with air con.... (-: However for all else we experienced the old Mog was definitely favourite... (-:

I drove down to Sorrento in my S1 Roadster. I would have been glad of aircon at times.

It can get pretty hot out here in the States and a feature I always liked on the soft top of my MK3 Spitfire was the opening rear window. Considering Morgan touring over here is anything from 1000 to 8000 miles most times covering some sort of desert type terrain I had an upholsterer put in a zip around the rear window. This means I can unzip the window with the roof up and allow a really good air flow through whilst keeping the harsh sun off me, works really well.

I think in the US some folk had a "Surrey" top ... not sure of the name, but just a top made of perhaps vinyl or canvas, and which used the original hood frame and the windscreen fasteners a the front, the rear of the material with just with a couple of straps from the frame down to leave the back opened and keep the material taught...Think Jerry Wilburn had one such..? Not much use on a Ferrari though (-:

Link below is a pic I took of my Mog on our early morning Amalfi coast run that I found in a gallery I posted on the TM image Library..

https://www.tm-img.com/image/F5GjW

Bimini is the name

As Buchaneers from Scotland, we’ll probably be scorched even if it’s foggy😂 I’ve taken to wearing a cowboy hat lately, it’s great for keeping the sun off and actually stays on my head, baseball caps are always too small, they look more like valve caps on me😃absolutely useless!
My back window does come down do if it’s too hot that’s an option but we really want the roof off as much as possible.