page_title: Morgan Motor Company
section_title: V-Twin three-wheelers (1911–1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Morgan Motor Company / Early cars: three-wheelers and 4/4s / V-Twin three-wheelers (1911–1939)
caption_attribution_description: Morgan Aero 2-Seater Sports 1926
context_page_description: The Morgan Motor Company is a British motor car manufacturer founded in 1910 by Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan and owned by the Italian investment group InvestIndustrial since March 2019.
  Morgan is based in Malvern Link, an area of Malvern, Worcestershire, and employs approximately 220 people. Morgan has stated that they produce 850 cars per year, all assembled by hand. The waiting list for a car is approximately six months, and has sometimes been as long as ten years.
  Morgan cars are unusual because wood has been used in their construction for a century, and is still used in the 21st century for framing the body shell. A visitor centre and museum have exhibits about the company's history from Edwardian times until the present day, developments in automobile technology, and a display of automobiles. There are also guided tours of the factory.
context_section_description: H.F.S. Morgan's first car design was a single-seat three-wheeled runabout, which was fabricated for his personal use in 1908, with help from William Stephenson-Peach, the father of friends, and the engineering master at Malvern College. Powered by a 7 hp (5.2 kW; 7.1 PS) Peugeot twin cylinder engine (from an abandoned motorcycle project), the car had a backbone chassis, an idea retained for all following Morgan three-wheelers, and used as little material and labour as Morgan could manage. A single-seat three-wheeler with coil-spring independent front suspension, unusual at the time, the driveshaft ran through the backbone tube to a two-speed transmission (with no reverse), and chain drive to each of the rear wheels. The steering was by tiller, and it had band brakes. It also had no body.
  With financial help from his father and his wife, the car was put into production at premises in Pickersleigh Road, Malvern Link. Three single-seater cars were exhibited at the 1910 Motor Show at Olympia in London. In spite of great interest being shown, only a few orders were taken, and Morgan decided a two-seater was needed to meet market demand. This was built in 1911, adding a bonnet, windscreen, wheel steering, and crank starting; it was displayed at the 1911 Motor Cycle Show. An agency was taken up by the Harrod's department store in London, with a selling price of £65. The Morgan became the only car ever to appear in a shop window at Harrods.
  Interest in his runabout led him to patent his design and begin production. While he initially showed single-seat and two-seat versions of his runabout at the 1911 Olympia Motor Exhibition, he was convinced at the exhibition that there would be greater demand for a two-seat model. The Morgan Motor Company was registered as a limited private company only in 1912 with H.F.S. Morgan as managing director and his father, who had invested in his son's business, as its first chairman.
  In 1912, Morgan set out to win the trophy offered by The Light Car & Cyclecar for greatest distance covered in an hour, at Brooklands. The single-seater covered 55 mi (89 km), only to be narrowly beaten by a GWK; Morgan returned later the same year, reaching nearly 60 mi (97 km).
  Morgan established its reputation via competition such as winning the 1913 Cyclecar Grand Prix at Amiens in France, driven by W. G. McMinnies, with an average speed of 42 mph (68 km/h) for the 163 mi (262 km) distance. This became the basis for the 'Grand Prix' model of 1913 to 1926, from which evolved the 'Aero', and 'Sports' models. Morgan himself won the "very tough" ACU Six Days' Trial in 1913, in the sidecar class. The same year, the company entered the MCC reliability trial, which it continued to do until 1975.
  Racing success led to demand the company proved unable to meet.
  These models used air-cooled or liquid-cooled variations of motorcycle engines. The engine was placed ahead of the axis of the front wheels in a chassis made of steel tubes brazed into cast lugs.
  After the First World War, the company introduced an easily changed rear wheel, which customers had been seeking for several years. The 1921 Popular, powered by an 8 hp (6.0 kW; 8.1 PS) JAP and bodied in poplar, sold for £150. It was a sales success, the price dropping to £128, and the name changing to Standard, by 1923, when a Blackburne engine was also available. The Grand Prix was priced £155, and the Family (with two notional child seats behind the front bench, setting a standard 2+2s would follow for generations) was £148 with air-cooled engine, or £158 with water-cooled engine. The Anzani-powered Aero was also available, for £148. MAG engines were also optional.
  Morgan's racing efforts suffered a blow in 1924, when E. B. Ware's JAP-engined car rolled at the JCC 200 mi (320 km) at Brooklands; Ware was seriously hurt, leading to a ban on three-wheelers competing as cars.
  Electric headlamps were made available in 1924, at an £8 cost. The Popular, powered by a 976 cc (59.6 cu in) engine, sold for £110, the 1,098 cc (67 cu in) Aero for £148, and the one-seater £160.
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caption: 1926 Morgan Aero 2-seater Sports
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