After each component is completed, the various wood and metal parts are assembled. The completed chassis are rolled down the hill, where the finished bodies are fitted. Each car takes about a week to build from bare chassis.
Across the facility is the paint shop, where the cars are taken apart again, primed and sprayed with up to 11 coats of paint to ensure everything is properly covered, and the vehicles are then sent for trimming next door. Leather is cut and shaped, women with sewing machines – some looking older than their operators – sit in the corner. Men with grey hair carefully install the finished upholstery. In one area sits a black car, with white vinyl being applied to it, and a pink-linked interior. Fittingly, it belongs to the fashion designer Thomas Pink, one of celebrity Morgan customers. From there, the cars move into the final finishing area (above), where everything is checked and prepared for delivery. The 3 Wheelers, which are constructed in a separate building, meet the traditional cars here too.
Morgan’s factory is different to any other car assembly plant I’ve been to. There are no robots. There are no moving assembly lines. There’s none of the fastidious cleanliness that you’d get at McLaren, or the faceless industrial warehouses of the larger volume manufacturers. At Morgan, there are just men and women that are very good at what they do, working away in their own little section of workshop. Half finished cars are simply left waiting outside the appropriate building. I see a shell-less 3 Wheeler sitting on a Bentley pallet in the parking lot. No one can tell me exactly how it might have arrived there…
Above the wood shop, daft staff have placed amusing notes for their co-workers. Somehow I can’t imagine that sort of behaviour cutting it at McLaren, but at Morgan it’s all part of the place’s charm.
The closest I can compare the Morgan factory to is Lamborghini in Sant’Agata – there too, you get the sense that the cars are being constructed with care by people, rather than assembled by robots or just having bits attached to them by people with air tools. But Morgan has more eccentric character. It’s as if many interesting men in sheds, with deep-rooted passions for building things, have pooled their resources and formed a company. Which, in a way, is pretty much what’s happened, with the Morgan family’s passion bringing everyone together over the decades. The cars they construct are not just vehicles, they’re the products of that passion and craftsmanship, unlike the robot-fused productions of most other manufacturers.
Tour over, it’s time for the next part of our Morgan experience – a drive in the 3 Wheeler. Stay tuned…
