Morgan Goes Back to the Future

I don't remember the exact number, and it isn't important, but many years ago Mr. Honda (yes, that Mr. Honda) cast his eye over how the motor industry was coalescing into ever larger groups, and observed wryly that eventually the whole industry would consist of only four (or whatever) companies.

Then he paused for a second and added, "and Morgan."

This is one measure of just how iconic Morgan is, and how even very big players like Mr. Honda have long had a sneaking regard for the tiny sports car maker from England's picturesque Malvern Hills. This does not mean that Morgan will ever be a big player, because it will not - not while building cars essentially by hand in a factory they've occupied since the early years of last century.

What Mr. Honda meant was that Morgan is one of the great survivors; and every time you talk to the third-generation family head of the company, Charles Morgan, you realize over again that they are really pretty happy doing their own thing, thank you.

They still don't build as many cars in a year as a mainstream manufacturer would make on a day-shift; they still have a waiting list (though not of such a geological time-span as it once was); and you can still go to the quirky factory and see your own car being built if you like (try that with a Lexus). But, as they always have, Morgan retains the knack of making money from building cars, and while the look is unmistakably "traditional," Morgan isn't nearly as frozen in time as non-believers would have you believe they are.

Intrinsically, Morgans are surprisingly "green," too, in their own idiosyncratic way. The whole company (which celebrates its centenary next year) was founded on the principle of making a car that could give big performance from a small engine through the simple trick of being as light as possible; and that still applies even now they have lots of power in models like the BMW V8-powered Aero 8.

They use technology intelligently: they use wood for framing Morgan bodies because it still works, but they "engineer" their wood in very clever, modern processes. The Aero 8's all-aluminum chassis is a beautiful piece of high-efficiency, low-volume design and fabrication; and they say that the stunning Aeromax coupe that they're now making in a series of 100 customer cars is the first car in the world to be clothed entirely in "superformed" aluminum panels.

But in Geneva, they unveiled a bigger statement still, in a concept they call LIFECar. You couldn't possibly mistake it for anything but a Morgan, and the lines are essentially Aeromax meets Buck Rogers, but it's what's under the amazing skin that really counts.

Proposed to Morgan by Hugo Spowers of RiverSimple (a specialist company investigating new ideas in environmentally sound transport), the LIFECar concept is based around a four-stack hydrogen fuel cell (made by QinetiQ) that converts hydrogen directly into electricity while emitting nothing more harmful than heat and water.

The electricity powers four motors, one to each wheel, which are 92 to 94 percent efficient across their operating range and also support regenerative braking - turning otherwise lost braking energy back into electricity that is stored in the car's ultra-capacitor system (way more efficient that batteries) and up to 1,000 amps can be released to boost acceleration as needed.

The whole thing is managed by highly sophisticated control systems developed by Cranfield University, and in a car weighing just 600 kg (1320 lbs.) it promises a range of 250 miles, a modest top speed potential of 85 mph, and 0-62 mph in less than seven seconds - with a consumption equivalent to 150 mpg in gasoline terms, and virtually zero emissions.

They also say that while the concept isn't a runner yet, it could be - all the technology is real and available now, not planned for the future. So the familiar mixture of wood, aluminum and leather remains part of the brew, but this is a Morgan worthy of welcoming the company into its second century. Mr. Honda would have loved it.