Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - CX Plus 4 Update

Hello Mogsters,

I thought that you might be interested in developments with my CX Plus 4. It started in August, when daughter Alexandria visited us before the new term – she is a professor at Twente University in the Eastern Netherlands, close to the border with Germany. I had been keen to take my Morgan to Europe, and I was getting cabin fever, so it seemed like an ideal chance to offer to drive her home. So I did. Make the offer, that is… so magnanimous.

We took the Chunnel to Calais and stayed at L’Oye Plage for the night. We left the next morning and drove through France, Belgium and Germany to PhantasiaLand near Cologne. We are both roller coasterites, and PhantasiaLand is a Steam Punk City theme park with lots of them. Very big, very beautiful, plays 30’s music and retro swing with lots of steam in the air.. Their signature hotel is the Charles Lindbergh, with small cabins in the shape of a fuselage of a wooden aircraft with two bunks – and the signature ride is called Fly, a Lindbergh 1927 imagination of a Steam Punk future after too much absinthe. You strap in standing up, with a chest plate and leg brackets. It stars slowly and then rotates so you are suspended and you fly like Superman face down. Then the catapult fires you into barrel rolls and it zooms around the hotel, just missing stuff. We had queued for the two front places - not for everyone, but great for the insane or fearless. It wraps around the hotel, and you can hear the screams all day… LOL

We drove through Germany to Alex’s home in Enschede, spent few days there, and then we left - Alex for Spain, me to Düsseldorf to meet a German friend at the Classic Remise. This was an old railway roundhouse for locos, and is now a combination of car museum, expensive (very expensive) rare car sales showroom and storage for people who do not drive their zillion euro cars. I felt like a voyeur – beautiful cars I could not afford and would not want drive. But it was very interesting, and my friend Roderich (who has owned six Morgans) was a great host.

I wanted to see East Germany/Czech Republic/who knows where now that the soviets have left, so I headed East but on the way I stopped in Göttingen. I have always wanted to visit this city and the Institute of Mathematics, where Carl Gauss and Bernhard Riemann (of the Riemann Hypothesis) were professors. The famous Hypothesis is in a paper he wrote when he entered the institute in 1859, and is about the location of Primes in all the Natural Numbers between one and infinity (specifically, it suggests that the “non-trivial roots of the Zeta function have real part one hall” – and that the roots specify the location of the Primes. It has never been proven, although it now forms a key foundation for many mathamatical applications.). The Institute has three-dimensional models of maths functions that the students and professors s have created over the last 100 years or so. Quite fascinating, so I spent two mornings there happily browsing the collections. And Göttingen is a lovely university town to hike through.

Then off to East Germany. The Morgan was going well, cruising at 160 - 220 km/h in Germany. It can do 240+ but there was too much traffic, and the overtake was too high to do that safely so I did not exceed around 220 km/h. Or so. The nav system reported that I had travelled for 95 km at an average speed of over 165 kn/h, but I took some flak for this when I got home. East Germany and Bohemia were very beautiful, however breakfast was rarely available in any of the villages, and the only non-meat dinners I could get were boiled fish and carrots. Yum… or maybe not totally yum. Great beer and very friendly people, though.

I had switched the information panel into km/h but then the selector button on the wiper stalk failed, so I was unable to check the oil level and I could not change to mph when I returned to the UK. I ordered a new switchgear set from MMC (£560 or so) and replaced it when I returned – it is not difficult on the pre-airbag cars. I have photos if anyone it interested,

I had been away for nearly a month when I took a look at the map to plan my return… I managed to get so far East that it was clear that it would take me an age to get home unless I got serious about it. So I drove along the Alps through Austria, Switzerland and Germany in one long day into Eastern France, where I stayed at a chateau. My German is pretty rudimentary, but my French is OK so it was a relief to be in a country where I could chat. Then back through a couple of pretty French towns to St Malo for the ferry to the UK. The ferry stopped at Guernsey for Immigration Control into the UK - everyone had to get off, with old people hobbling down the car ramps to a shed where we had our passports stamped. Just as well it was not raining. Brexit was such a great idea…

The Plus 4 is a wonderful car, and my daily transport in all weathers. It is much better than I had imagined, and even better than my 4.5 litre Plus 8 that I owned for twenty years in the USA. It cruises nicely at 100-130 mph in fifth or sixth, and accelerates strongly in fifth at over 100. I did around 7200 km in Europe and when I finally was able to check the oil level again it still showed 5/4. Amazing. I ran it at 130 mph with the top both up and down, and it was fine either way, but I found that it needed careful folding with it down to avoid it coming up-stowed at high speed. I adjusted the rear location slightly when I got back, but whether it had moved or I had not noticed it before was not clear. And I bought some mohair/Velcro straps from Simmonds as a precaution for when I return.

Regards,
David Poole

David, that's a wonderful travelogue, thank you very much. From the steampunk theme park to Riehmann's conjecture, it's a wide arc, almost as wide as the number of prime numbers, and obviously both were fun. Morgan dealer Flaving from Unna has had a showroom at the Classic Remise in Düsseldorf for about 20 years, and he sells more Morgans there than in Unna. The Westphalians, of whom I am one even though I have lived in Cologne for 45 years, sometimes have the means, but they can be a bit sober, taciturn, and stingy. The Rhinelanders are more pleasure-seeking, so Morgan cars sell quite well in Düsseldorf. Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed Germany, among other places. And your highway speed is evidence of rapid assimilation when it comes to your driving style

BTW Flaving is the oldest Morgan dealer (apart from Pabst in Stuttgart?). Its headquarters are in Unna in Westphalia, near Dortmund. Gregory Flaving, who has since retired from the business for reasons of age, once told me how it all began. His father had a car dealership for Peugeots. The British Army was stationed nearby.
From time to time, senior members of the army would ask him if he could organize a Morgan from the UK for them. So his first customers were not Germans. Gregory's father took his racing bike (not a motor bike) and traveled using the ferry at Ostende or Calais from Dortmund to Malvern. There he picked up the car, dismantled his racing bike, and stowed it in the Morgan. He did this several times. That's how it all began.