see is the most authentic, honest car factory
in the world. Welcome to the Morgan
Motor Company. Unlike other factory tours that
take weeks of phone calls and emails just to orchestrate, Morgan is an open book. Every other car factory we've
been to, we're always ushered past secret rooms that hold
future designs and technology worth millions of dollars.
This Malvern, England based
workshop holds no secrets. All you'll find here are happy
designers, craftsmen and women, the smell of wood,
glue, leather. And did I say wood? So what do you need to know
about this place? Well, this is the oldest car
company in the world owned by a single family. Their designs, not much
different from five decades ago.
They produce a three-wheeled
car called, well, the three wheeler. And simply put, this is just
the coolest [BLEEP] place you'll ever visit
as a car enthusiast. And what better person to give
us a tour than a Morgan? A Mr. Charles Morgan.
So, Charles, where
are we right now? CHARLES MORGAN: Right,
well, this is where it starts, really. This is the start of the
Morgan assembly line. It all starts with the chassis,
of course, that we actually import in from
Birmingham, which is only about 30 miles north of us. But this is built for
a [INAUDIBLE] shape to our designs,
obviously.
It's designed on a
CAD [INAUDIBLE]. And as I said, it's cohesively
bonded aluminium. You've got what is the same
principle as the racing cars. In other words, what I'm saying
is, the chassis does all the work.
It provides all the stiffness. It provides all of the mounting
points for the engine and the gear box and
the power train. And we even, of course,
fit the fuel tank. We fit all the electric wiring,
which is neatly hidden inside the chassis.
And you can actually
start the car. You can drive it as a chassis. It's not actually driven. But we do run it.
And of course we run it because
we have a quality check that is demanded
by BMW or by one of our engine suppliers. And that means you go through
all the diagnostic checks on the engine. And what I quite like about
that, doing it as a chassis, is that everything is visible. So if there are any leaks, or
if there is any problems at all, it's all accessible
to put right.
And that's particularly
pleasant if you're an electrical engineer, for
example, because modern wiring [INAUDIBLE] are very,
very complicated. What happens in this e-box,
there's actually five computers, I think,
in this car. This is actually the 4.8 Liter
BMW, which it's still a current engine, but they've
built it especially for us. And the reason they do that is
they've gone twin turbo 4.4 Liter to keep the
emissions down.
But actually, the 4.8 In this
car, because it only weighs, less than 2,000 pounds-- it's about 1,150 kilos. This car is ultra light. So actually, the emissions
are very low anyway. So we didn't need to go to the complications of the twin turbos.
But this is the diagnostic
check equipment, so that allows us to run
the engine up. -Are you sure that doesn't pick
up any Nazi frequencies? [LAUGHTER] CHARLES MORGAN: It's an early
mobile phone actually. I think one of the reasons why
BMW quite like working with us, to be honest, is that most
of their cars are still [INAUDIBLE]. And they tend to be a lot
heavier than an aluminium car.
So the engineers-- I'm not talking about the
marketing people here, but the engineers quite enjoy seeing
their product in our lightweight frame. Dr. Schmidt-- who's left
unfortunately, I think he's gone to Ford-- but he was
the head of engine power train at BMW. And he got out one of the
earlier versions of this and said, at last, Charles,
I can feel my engine.
Because normally
it's so quiet. [MUSIC PLAYING] JF MUSIAL: I wouldn't be able
to do a full episode on the history of Morgan. It would just take too long. But here's what you
need to know.
The roots of the company come
from HFS Morgan, with a basic vehicle formula-- Powerful motorcycle motors,
light chassis, simple, resourceful, and fun. And for Malvern, where every
road somehow leads up a mountain, that's especially
useful. So let's start off with--
what is this thing? I've seen it before, but I
have no idea what it is. JONATHAN WELLS: OK, well, this
is our 2009 life car concept vehicle, really.
And this was a car that featured
a hydrogen fuel cell platform underneath it. So it's a completely
zero emissions car. It was a great advertisement
for the company, because people see a zero emissions car,
and they go, wow, Morgan, a sports car maker is building
something very environmentally friendly. But then you actually to get
into Morgan and the brand, and it does a lot more.
When you realize that all the
materials in this car are locally sourced. And the factory itself isn't
using big machinery, and it's hand crafting these vehicles. It's a low energy manufacture. The car is very lightweight.
You've got all these other
fantastic environmentally friendly accreditations that
they're adding to it. So although it is a zero
emissions vehicle, every Morgan is actually very
environmentally friendly. They have a long life span. They're kept for a long
period of time.
So, it was just a testament to
the way in which we build cars considerably. JF MUSIAL: I think the one thing
that we all notice when we first come in here
is the smell. CHARLES MORGAN: Yes, this
is the wood shop. This is very unusual to
find a wood shop like this in a car factory.
You'll find veneers in a luxury
car factory, but you won't find guys putting together
solid hard wood that's this grand. Obviously these are
the back presses. When you laminate some wood-- this is really heavy-- ah,
I can't pick it up. But when you laminate wood,
obviously you put the grain in the different directions, and
then you bond them together.
And of course, you want to take
all the air out of it that you can to stop the air
bubbles in the glue, so that creates a bonded laminate. And that's a very strong
component. And of course, it's got
a lot of spring in it. And it seems to last forever.
That's partly why we use wood. We also use wood, to be
honest, because it's environmentally correct. Because it encourages people
to plant forestry. And it's the young trees
that clean the air.
So it's our, if you'd like,
bit of greenness too. But we're actually using wood
in sustainable forestries that's being kept going by
people who use wood. But I suppose the other thing
is it gives us a unique proposition. And these days, basically,
there's so much competition in the car industry, we
want to maintain something that's very Morgan.
Something that's
very different. And as you said, the smell's
very nice, too. The 1950s. Plus Morgan plus four coupe.
And we've got it here just to
show that we can actually build the cars and keep the
cars going on the road. For instance, Morgan probably
has got about 30,000 or 40,000 cars around the world. And they do say that a
Morgan never dies. The wood-- it's not in brilliant
condition, is it? But the fact is that
you can replace it.
So basically, what people tend
to do with Morgans, is that they re-chassis them. They re-body them. And they keep them going with
components, which again, is very, very good from the
environmental point of view. Because ideally, what you want
to do is produce a product that generation after
generation, like a watch, is going to want to keep going.
That's very much part
of our philosophy. Now, one person definitely is
responsible for a chassis and for a wood frame. So if you like that,
that gives the ownership to the operator. And he signs it off.
He could actually sign it. Sometimes they do. They sign it. But I think it's very important
to recognize that a car is a combination.
It's not one person that build
the whole car, but it's a combination of different people
who actually are really skilled in their own
particular area. The wood's ash. It's English. It grows fairly straight.
Comes from England or Europe. Not America. It's faster growing
in America, but it's a slow grow here. What's good about
it is the grade.
You don't tend to get too many
knots in it, and so you can use a lot of it. And it grows fairly straight,
whereas oak tends to go in lots of different directions. But it's the same material
as a handle of a cricket bat, for instance. It absorbs shock really well.
In the old days, in the Italian
factories, they have this thing called Superleggera,
and that was the aluminum body. And then you added some
tubular steel frame underneath. And in a sense, this is
exactly the same. This is the structure underneath
the aluminum body of the three wheeler.
Under this, of course, is
a big tubular chassis. Yeah, but this if you like, is
just a way of keeping the aluminum taut and acting as
a little bit of a cushion between the chassis
and the body. The problem with Superleggera,
of course, is that it was steel against aluminum. So of course the aluminum
reacts with the steel and corrodes.
We don't have that problem
with the wood. So to an extent, this is
Morgan Superleggera. Without the problems. When you actually treat the
wood, and obviously this is to a certain extent, how much
work you want to put in.
A bit like a favorite
pair of shoes. They tend to get better
with age. JF MUSIAL: Yeah. CHARLES MORGAN: And
so will wood.
And it will look better and
better and better the more you rub it and polish it. This is obviously [INAUDIBLE]. So I prefer this style of luxury
interior to veneers. Veneers are an acquired
taste, really.
Veneered cigar boxes and
all that kind of thing. This is more honest, I think. Proper real wood. And of course, what you get
here is you get the same thing, where you get every bit
of wood slightly different.
So you've got a very personal
product out of wood. These jigs are slightly
fascinating. They've been here since
the war, I suppose. JF MUSIAL: What is
the jig for? CHARLES MORGAN: Well, this
is the real [INAUDIBLE] for one of the traditional
cars.
JF MUSIAL: Oh, cool. CHARLES MORGAN: And as you see,
it's just three bits of ash with the grain going
a different direction. JF MUSIAL: So you've got the
vacuum stuff over there. That's the modern
version of this? CHARLES MORGAN: Yes.
This is just sheer
brute force. JF MUSIAL: And how long are
they staying in here for? CHARLES MORGAN: Half a day. Six hours. JF MUSIAL: Cool.
It's very cool. JONATHAN WELLS: But what I
brought to the design team essentially is 3D surfacing. So Matt would sketch the ideas
out, and I'd draw with him. And then we needed some way
of relating these concept sketches and aesthetic design
training to the way we build cars in the shop floor.
So my job would be to take the
sketches and model these in 3D, sometimes in clay as well,
but mainly in 3D on the computer screen. We'd apply textures and
materials and colors to this, and visualize exactly
what this car is going to look like. Show this to Charles, and say,
here you go, Charles, this is your car in 3D. Once we have the sign-off, we
would then chop this car up on the screen, take out some
printed plots to the wood shop, they would make this out
of wood, and then the plan would be to hand craft
this entire car.
So everything you see here is
hand beaten from a flat sheet of aluminum. JF MUSIAL: It's amazing you've
from modern technology back to old vintage technology. JONATHAN WELLS: Exactly, yeah. [MUSIC PLAYING] -And that brings up an
interesting point.
Every corner you turn your
smell something new and wonderful, like a chef walking
into a fresh produce market. But not only that, you start
looking at the faces. Less than 200 people work
in these work shops. Everyone from designers
to wood craftsman.
It's a close-knit family. Men and women with 40 years of
experience between these walls training young teenagers. There are no instruction books,
no Volkswagen era just-in-time logistic systems. Everything is taught by word
of mouth with the hands of experience.
And despite the archaic
methods, it's all just working. It will continue to work for
years to come, even as they ramp up daily production. CHARLES MORGAN: So once you've
got the wood frame, then we cover it in aluminum. And the panels are a combination
of pre-formed and literally hand assembled.
So what you'll see is
somebody actually wiring the edge of this. So he's turning it around
and putting a-- JF MUSIAL: It's all hand done? CHARLES MORGAN: Hand
done, yeah. This is actually a 1950s
or 1960s body. It's a lot narrower.
People were smaller
in the old days. JF MUSIAL: Seems
that way, yes. CHARLES MORGAN: Cars
were smaller, but they're all very light. Once you've-- JF MUSIAL: Whoa! Could we both pick it up? CHARLES MORGAN: Yeah,
of course.
That's the whole car. JF MUSIAL: That's incredible. CHARLES MORGAN:This, again, is
about a six-hour process to assemble the aluminum panel. We tend to have a half day cycle
throughout the factory, so that things move
on every half-- I think you'll still find
the affordable cars, they're using aluminum.
The new Jaguar F type is very
much an aluminum car. And we pioneered that technology
on the Aero, so yes, we're not perhaps
pathfinders anymore, but we were pioneers then. The trouble with carbon fibers
is there's a very short supply of it. It's mostly wanted by the
aircraft industry.
So the price has gone
through the roof. So it's really only super
car territory. And our buyers are not
necessarily people who want to pay 500,000 pounds for a car. JONATHAN WELLS: There's certain
elements that have a nod to a more classic
era of motoring.
And that's what's nice
about a Morgan. Morgan doesn't conform to
generic car design. It doesn't follow
any rule book. Nowadays, car design can be
quite constricted by the rules and regulations and positions
of certain parts of the car.
We try not to get too
blinded by that. We like the proportion
of the Morgan car. The wind line in vehicles like
this, we try to add a bit more tension to it, and strengthen
it a bit, and give it a bit more stance and purpose. But, as you say, that classic
form is very much there.
It's the British Coke
bottle proportion on the side of the car. But, as I mentioned, some of
these lines are sped up a great deal. There's a lot more sharp edges,
which break the air away cleaner, and improve the
aerodynamics, while staying true to what we can achieve
with the actual materials. CHARLES MORGAN: So, this
is our paint shop.
As I say, once the car's
disassembled, they all come in here. And each component is painted. We've actually got two paint
shops because the constraints on our production system
is paint, really. It's the slowest process,
is baking the paint.
JF MUSIAL: Waiting. CHARLES MORGAN: And waiting
for it to dry. JONATHAN WELLS: In the
development department, there's 10 of us. Very closely tight knit team.
JF MUSIAL: Are you
all in the same-- JONATHAN WELLS: Literally
all in the same room. And everybody is a genius and
a specialist in their own right that gets involved with
lots of different things. And as you mentioned, you do
have to conform to things like harmonization, and get
this passed off. In a lot of companies, the
design may happen, and then enters the next division
where you can't do this and can't do that.
And something's lost. And then it moves on again,
and the material engineers can't quite work with this,
so something else is lost. And you end up with a
fairly generic form. But for us, when we're drawing
and we're sketching, I've got harmonization here looking over
my shoulder going, oh those headlights need
to be a bit higher.
So I scrap that drawing, and
I work on the next thing. And arguably, that could
compromise the design in some instances, but what we find is
when you do hit the nail on the head, and you get something
that works, really exciting concept sketch, and
harmonization are happy straight away. And so are the material
engineers. So is everyone else.
That idea has got more chance to
make it all the way to the road, to the end user,
with that same excitement and drama. I think essentially over the
last 10 years, it's been a roller coaster at Morgan. Cars like the Aero have come
along and shown people that you can build super cars
with this DNA. And when you are building
vehicles, with those performance figures like the
Aeros-- and even the three wheeler on the other end the
spectrum-- do have, you do have to consider a lot more
suspension dynamics, and aerodynamics, and all
sorts of stuff.
These tests are very
expensive. Wind tunnels are
very expensive. So small companies like us are
encouraged, really, to start using a lot of onscreen
simulation. So we do.
We run every single CAD model
through onscreen CFD. CHARLES MORGAN: Oh,
nice and quiet. JF MUSIAL: Yes. CHARLES MORGAN: We're now
smelling cow or leather, as we would call it.
But no, essentially as I say,
the assembly goes back together, and then we start to
trim the inside of the car. And this is where you see the
different specifications that a customer wants coming out. We actually use Scottish
leather. The cows are from Scotland.
I think there's less barbed wire
out there, so they don't scratch them. But no seriously, that's
the reason, actually. And-- JONATHAN WELLS: We had the idea
for three wheeler, and we started sketching it. And 18 months later, we're all
in the workshop doing a 48-hour stint building the
things up ourselves, and seeing this design
come to life.
And it's at the Geneva
Motor Show. A matter of a few months later,
the first cars are on the road going to production. So from a sketch to a full
complete production car on the road, you're talking less than
two years, which is no time really, compared to
other companies. JF MUSIAL: Comapred to the
big manufacturers.
The Americans, the Germans, the
Japanese, who spend six, seven, eight years designing-- JONATHAN WELLS: I think that's
testament to the way in which we work. And the way the factory and
development and technology are all united in this pot. CHARLES MORGAN: This is
basically where all the cars come after they've
been road tested. JF MUSIAL: Every car
gets road tested? CHARLES MORGAN: Every car
gets road tested.
And then it comes in here. And this is the detailing,
if you like. So it enables us to really,
really inspect the paint work. Essentially, each car will
spend about half a day in here, get a thorough inspection,
and then be passed off for quality control.
JF MUSIAL: Who's the final
person that signs off on a car going to the customer? CHARLES MORGAN: One
of these guys. JF MUSIAL: Each person
is assigned a car and sign it off? They go through a checklist
of things? CHARLES MORGAN: Absolutely. JONATHAN WELLS: I think Morgan
design is uncompromised. I think it's excitement
and fun.
It's happiness. I think people see a Morgan, and
it makes them feel happy. There's no pretentiousness,
there's no arrogance. It's a very honest design,
which is challenging, uncompromised, and there's
a lot of stories to it.
There's a lot of story. There's a lot of meat to
talk about in the pub, when you pull up. CHARLES MORGAN: Morgan's link
with motor racing, really, is that we've used it
as a test bed. So essentially, we feel that if
a car performs well on the track, then it's going
to perform quite well on the road.
There are now, of course,
test tracks as well. And that's another thing. The German manufacturers will
tell you that if you can drive a car 200 miles an hour, it's
going to be really quite good at 100 miles an hour. So there's an element
of that in it.
But we also, of course, were one
of the first cars to have a bonded aluminum chassis-- adhesively bonded aluminum. Now, when I told that to my
father, he said, is that a good idea, Charles? I know we made those air fix
kits, but should we actually make a car like that? So we thought it would be quite
a good thing to test it on the track first before some
poor owner actually finds out that the bonding doesn't work. Seriously though, Le Mans
is a 24-hour race. So if a car lasts 24 hours at
the max at Le Mans, then it's pretty sure it's going to be a
good road car as a chassis.
So we use the long distance
endurance racing and the GT. Championships to bottom out
exactly what this chassis would do under great stress
and under great strain. And of course, you do put
bigger strain, because typically a modern sticky
race tire will pull 3G, perhaps more. Whereas a road tire will
only ever go up to one or a bit over one.
So you're putting a hell of
a lot more stress into the components. That's the main reason
we do motor racing. Because it's all about
enjoyment when it comes down to it. We are about actually a car
factory, which provides people with the experience of having
fun behind the wheel.
And I think you still
can in safety. The super car world, and to a
certain extent, the racing world has just gone out of-- it's gone completely out of
the possibilities of the normal person, and
that's a shame. Because to an extent, Morgan was
really about offering an affordable way of going racing, going into motor sport. I've got some lovely stories.
In fact, one of them
is American. The very first race at Sebring, the 12 hours at Sebring. And in fact, a competitor had
had his car blow up and was in the pub, when a Morgan
owner arrived. He'd only just bought his car.
I think it was a week old. And he came to watch the race. And the guy in the pub said, do
you want to enter with me? Because my car's blown up. And this poor bloke went,
well, all right.
So he ends up doing the race,
and they came 13th overall. JF MUSIAL: With the car just
off the showroom floor. That's cool. CHARLES MORGAN: So that was the
philosophy behind Morgan, really, was to provide a car
that without much work, you could enter in a race
and do quite well.
Those days are certainly gone. Well, internationally
they are. But that doesn't mean to say
that we don't still believe in that philosophy. This is the top of the hill.
We have a very sophisticated
assembly line, actually. It's gravity feed. Well, it's only gravity feed
relatively recently because an engineering guru came
around here. And he said, gosh, this
is brilliant.
You've got this business of no
expensive equipment because you just push the car
down the hill. And I said, but the problem is
we're pushing them up the hill at the moment. So we've changed it now. We are pushing them
down the hill..
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