The Morgan Plus 8 – is a Classic Car with a 1930’s design, built over 60 years after its time it still had enough power through its V8 Engine to out accelerate even the most sophisticated of sports cars. The Plus 8 is a unique mix of old fashioned romantic roadster and bone shaking muscle car.

In the late 1960’s supplies of the 2138cc Triumph 4 Cylinder Engine dried up, Morgan were left without a high performance engine for their flagship Plus 4 model. However help was on its way in the form of Rovers all alloy 3.5 Litre, V8 engine which was derived from a discarded Buick design from the early 1960’s. Light, compact and powerful – at 165bhp it was ideal for the job and transformed the Morgan into a real road burner, Top speed leaped to more than 120 mph with rapid acceleration matched by very few road cars.

Renamed the Plus 8, it looked identical to its predecessor at a glance – but in fact had a slightly longer wheel base, wheel track and subtly different body contours. The most obvious of the changes were the light alloy wheels, but underneath, the sliding pillar front suspension and leaf sprung live rear axle remained – along with the vintage styled rock hard drive.

This Classic Car was an immediate success, with over 4000 being built by the mid 1990’s. Steel bodywork was standard with ash framing, but as usual there was an optional sports light weight version available from 1975 onwards. Early cars used the noisy old fashioned Moss Gearbox familiar on Jaguars saloons, but from 1972 the 4 speed rover transmission was used, The 5 speed unit from the SD1 Rover was used from 1977. Other changes followed – Fuel Injection in 1984, Rack and Pinion steering in 1986.

More up to date versions of this Classic had a 3 Litre version of the Rover Engine – putting out 190bhp, as with the 4/4 demand for this car was healthy with a waiting list of a few years.