A day with Morgan boss Steve Morris

10.15am

Still talking, we begin a factory walk, something Morris passionately believes goes with the job. He seems to recognise everyone, although knowing 182 names might present a challenge. We leave the admin building at the top of the site (one of the original two put there by HFS in 1913) and work our way down through buildings that have gradually grown down the hill, away from Pickersleigh Road. Today, there’s a modern paint shop to one side and an even more modern final assembly building farther down the site. Whisper this, but Morgan isn’t only old stuff.

The company’s big preoccupations at present are to build up deliveries of the new Aero 8 (Morris has just taken delivery of his own) and to progress the EV3, the superbly styled, battery-powered version of the 3 Wheeler that caused such a stir at the Geneva motor show in March.

The MD is heading into meetings about both. Even so, he automatically stops at areas of journalistic interest. It’s clear he could never be remote from the nuts and bolts of things. He swings big superformed panels about and picks tiny components out of bins with the aplomb of a technician, because he was one. 

A local lad, Morris joined the company at the age of 16 as a sheet metal apprentice, after being repeatedly coerced by his father into asking for a job. After that, his career headed upwards, propelled by a work ethic, ambition and an ability to get on with people. He made foreman, helping to modernise archaic work practices, and then went into higher education at Birmingham City University, “because I couldn’t see myself making bonnets forever”.

After that, the Morgan family perceived his qualities and took him into the upper echelons of the company. He has been boss since 2013 but on the board for a decade.

10.30am

We’re late for the EV3 review, which takes place adjacent to the old factory buildings in a little shed once inhabited by Chris Lawrence, a celebrated engineer with strong Morgan connections. Now it houses new chief engineer John Beech, head of design Jonathan Wells and their teams. From outside, the building looks barely bigger than a double garage. Inside, it turns out it has snug accommodation for seven or eight people. People know it’s quaint, but no one complains.

Morris pulls up a chair to Beech’s desk and they start talking schedules. It’s all very well for a prototype to win approval at a motor show, but the EV3 – for which Morgan already has platoons of customers – needs some very different powertrain pieces sourced from very different suppliers. Is it going okay?

Meanwhile, the designers are working on a very different kind of launch. Selfridges, the upmarket store, will show and sell the first 20 production EV3s in a unique guise. Dealing with them has mostly been happy, I’m told, but their priorities are different from those of ‘normal’ car dealers. Are they still happy?

The discussion arcs back and forth like a Wimbledon tennis ball, running right through the minutiae of making a new kind of car. Meanwhile, the EV3 sounds fascinating. It will mimic the performance figures of the regular, petrol-powered 3 Wheeler and offer a range of around 150 miles. Today’s meeting throws up concerns over timing and battery spec and supply, but no major problems.

Still, sitting in a meeting like this brings home to the layman the risks involved in making cars, especially for a small company. But then, as Morris reminds me, Morgan people have been accepting them for more than a century.

11.30am

One more stop down the hill, away from Pickersleigh Road, and we’re in the final assembly and inspection shop, which is full of Aero 8s nearing the delivery stage. They look superb, but the boss eyes them extremely closely because an event called ‘Dealer Collection Day’ is looming, and no one is more critical of a new car than the guy who has to sell it. Thankfully, demand has been hearteningly strong.

12.45pm

Back in the office for a sandwich lunch at Morris’s desk, which, I gather, is the norm unless there are VIPs about. Delicious, anyway. 

I touch on Morgan politics. For a bloke whose elevation to the top job at Morgan has been surrounded by a fair bit of internecine strife, Morris seems remarkably uncomplicated. He handles questions about the 2013 removal of former MD Charles Morgan, sensational at the time, by playing what I’d describe as a friendly dead bat: he simply reckons it’s ancient history. Charles Morgan did things the board didn’t like and they showed their displeasure. End of. 

1.45pm

The next meeting isn’t on the agenda, but we wander across to the visitors’ centre for a review of Morgan’s web and social media publicity surrounding the Geneva show. There has been a big spike: lots of youthful interest in the EV3 that spread to the Aero 8. Everyone seems happy with the credentials of the visitors and the way they hung around on the site.

The meeting goes into numbers I probably shouldn’t report, but it’s fascinating that in a seven-person group, only Morris and I are older than early 30s. Reports of younger people not ‘getting’ Morgans seem quite wrong. It’s paying for the cars – or any sports cars – that’s the hurdle.