(Warning: I may sound like an over-excited teenager, but so will you once you’ve driven this thing)
The M3W
Chris Harris once stated about the Aeromax: “this car is all about impact, park it next to any other production car and it instantly renders that other shape completely dull and ordinary”. Once I first drove the Aeromax, I completely agreed with him and didn’t think any other car would have this much impact on its surroundings ever again… But after about 420km (that’s about 260 miles) I believe it is safe to say that the Morgan Motor Company has once again pulled it off.
As soon as you first lay eyes on the new Morgan Three Wheeler, you immediately know that this thing is special. The car’s shape is anything but ordinary and you instantly make your mind up about the fact that you hate it or love it. This thing has the ability to move even the greenest person on this earth, point proven hours later after receiving the thumbs up from one of our dear Prius drivers. Even the posh owner of an Aston Martin DBS, which is a seriously cool machine, rolled down his window to be able to fully enjoy my presence on the streets. Never before have I received so many compliments of all kinds of different people. Young, old, petrolhead or not… it really doesn’t matter, the little Morgan stuns just about every single person in this diesel-loving country of mine. And these are the people who have just seen it, they haven’t even been in it, let alone drive it. I feel sorry for them for having to miss out on such a fantastic experience.
When you have finally stopped inspecting every bolt and nut about this car, it’s time to get in the little car. Getting into the car requires some skill, but the big roll bar behind the seats can aid you in getting in without falling out and making a complete ass of yourself. It gets easier if you disconnect the steering wheel, this creates a lot more room for you to fall into, just don’t try to disconnect the steering for the first time on a busy market square, because chances are you’re going to be there for a while as I found out during my drive.
Once you’re in the car, the first challenge is to get the seatbelt on, sounds easy, but try it while wearing a thick jacket and with a passenger next to you. Everything is tightly packed into the cabin, so you better be good friends with the person next to you because this is a very social car. When all is safe and secure, it’s time to see what this thing can really do. The first thing that draws the attention is the driving position. You sit so low to the ground it almost feels like a go-cart, the pedals are heavy but provide enough feedback as far as throttle and clutch is concerned. The brakes do tend to feel a bit dead, but once you get some heat into them you will feel that you can trust these things to get you to a standstill in an orderly fashion. The tires look like they are from the 1930’s, but do provide grip to some extent, even in the wet. It will never be a real racing machine with the tire and suspension setup Morgan provides, but if you decide to buy this thing as a track car, you have completely missed the point of this car anyway. This car was not engineered for speed (I’m not sure it was engineered at all ), it does not offer you the best package to go round a corner like a cat with its tail on fire, but it is good at about anything else. This car is great for cruising at 60km/h (40 mph) and just enjoying yourself. You soak in the atmosphere of driving a typical old-fashioned Morgan, while the big V-twin up front occasionally heats your face when the air streams past the cylinders and into your comfort zone.
But don’t get me wrong, this thing is more than quick enough for what you would want to do with it. The engine has a truckload of torque, this makes the car easy to drive and suits the character of this machine very well. This amazing torque however does get you up to steam very quickly, even when you short shift to maintain grip or due to breaking it in.
The engine sounds like it has a lot of grunt and is never too loud or annoying to listen to. The fact that you are completely exposed to all the elements makes the M3W a car that is always able to thrill. If you do decide to have a go and get the speedometer past the legal mark, the car still feels very stable. I took it up to about 140km/h (just under 90 mph) and the car still feels stable and agile. The engine is just about on the 4000 rpm mark at that speed, but the noise level is very acceptable. The amount of wind noise surpasses most of the other noises and I did not find this very tiring. After about 9 hours in the car I was still feeling happy and awake, something a V6 roadster can’t match in my opinion.
The M3W is a very comfortable place to be in while cruising down the highway, in town or on a B-road at normal pace. The seat is just right and although one of your arms is hanging out, it all feels very natural after the first five miles. The only point of critique is the space in the driver’s foot well. It’s very narrow and there is no place to rest your left foot, this does get annoying after about 7 hours, but most of you won’t reach that point very often. The pedals are very close to each other so wear narrow shoes if you are planning on doing some spirited driving in this thing.
So now we know what it’s like to cruise around in, but what about really going for it? I can tell you this: that little green angry and noisy sigar gave me so much honest fun, that I’ve never felt so alive while driving a car in my entire life. I really live for this kind of stuff. There is no better feeling than braking hard for a corner, going down two gears while blipping the throttle and feeling the brake dust burn on your skin. Moments later you clip the apex of the corner with perfect accuracy as you can see where the wheel is on the pavement, so you hit every single apex every single time. Follow that maneuver by adding a hint of power into the equation to blast out of the corner, while constantly monitoring rear-end grip when the road is not as flat as you would want it to be. The little Morgan feels fast enough, but isn’t always predictable. It sometimes understeers when you wouldn’t expect it to. Applying more power on that sole rear tire sometimes even enlarges that problem, where you would normally expect oversteer (of course, I was still breaking it in so I didn’t use the full potential yet, but I don’t expect a change in higher revs/more throttle). After a while you do get used to the car’s characteristics and from then on, this car only delivers unprecedented fun! This thing really is something else…when I got out of the car at 10 pm I was actually far from done with it. I immediately wanted to do it all over again, the way this thing grips you is fantastic, but time consuming. Time really does fly while driving this thing. Before I even knew it, sun was starting to set. I hadn’t even stopped for food or drinks before 6 pm and I started driving at 9 in the morning. By the time it was time to deliver the car back to 1560, I really didn’t want to give it back. My eyes were red and irritated, my face black from brake dust and dirt and my hair was so dirty that I had to wash it 4 times just to get the smell out. I found a rock and one and a half flies in the water after washing my hair. I had been cold, wet and in some of the worst driving conditions you could think of for this car, but I didn’t care for one single second. I had tremendous amounts of FUN!
A picture of the foam that came off my head... looks a bit like the foam you get off your rims after not washing your car for six months.
But the best thing about the Three Wheeler, must be the reaction from all the kids I came across. I’m not the city driving kind of guy and I don’t like to be seen in other peoples car’s, but I do like to make people happy in any way I can and when I was driving through Ghent to pick up my co-pilot, I came across a children’s playground packed with about twenty kids, aged about 3 to 10. I decided to wait for thirty seconds just up front and as soon as the first one spotted me and yelled out, all the others followed instantly. I saw SO MANY smiles and happy faces, only to make them go completely WILD when I revved the engine up to 3000 revs, none of the parents complained about the noise, not even the policeman that had pulled up behind me which I didn’t spot in time… and that about sums up the M3W, it makes you feel like a kid again and does its best to make you go WILD with excitement, because the car itself was born, born to be wild!
I can’t wait to drive this thing again, a truly magnificent experience, thanks to 1560. I owed him a lot before, but now I owe him so much more. Thanks
), it does not offer you the best package to go round a corner like a cat with its tail on fire, but it is good at about anything else. This car is great for cruising at 60km/h (40 mph) and just enjoying yourself. You soak in the atmosphere of driving a typical old-fashioned Morgan, while the big V-twin up front occasionally heats your face when the air streams past the cylinders and into your comfort zone. 
![[Linked Image]](http://bradley.it/public_images/drive.jpg)
