That may have been so, but it still followed the same formula as the 1936 efforts of AC, Aston Martin, BMW, Lagonda, MG, Riley and the rest: swooping wings, shield-shaped grille, separate, circular headlights. Indeed, it wouldn’t be until the late 1940s that car design began to diversify through ‘envelope’ styling.
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Like any car firm, Morgan simply dusted off its old designs come 1946. No bad thing: the 4/4 had barely got going before World War Two had stopped play and had “made a most favourable impression” on us “by the sure and accurate way in which it can be put round a bend” and its “lively, willing performance”.
But even when the slightly larger and punchier Morgan +4 was added in 1950, it didn’t look fundamentally different.
And within just a few years, it was starting to look dated; look above to compare with the Triumph TR2 (from 1952) and Austin-Healey 100 (1953), then consider the smooth lines of the AC Ace (1953), Jaguar XK140 (1954) and MG A (1955).
By this time, Peter Morgan was a key figure at Malvern. He fancied trying “a more modern, all-enveloping style”, but his father was reluctant, “feeling that it was probably better to wait until such bodywork had stood the test of time”.
Henry died in 1959, and instantly Morgan’s advertising tone changed, to sell the +4 as “one of Britain’s few hand-built cars, made in the finest traditions of British craftsmanship”. And four years later, Morgan’s aesthetic finally re-entered the present with the introduction of the sleek, glassfibre-bodied +4+ coupé.
