Road test rewind: Morgan Plus 8

Aero-series Morgans have disappointed us with their non-linear steering response before, and this one follows a related theme. The car’s ride is fidgety on poor surfaces and reactive over bigger inputs. The car tracks straight on the flat but it’s easily kicked off line by ruts and camber. There is inherent balance and fluidity to the car’s handling on a smooth track, but both are darned hard qualities to unearth.

Verdict: Three stars

If the Plus 8 didn’t overcome your objectivity so well, three stars would seem generous. It doesn’t ride and doesn’t steer and is generally not all the car it really ought to be. It retains the disarming charm to woo with its looks, noise and pace, but its dynamic failings remain hard to forgive for the outlay.

We were mindful of the "aero incident" - Matt Saunders

The Autocar road test team had some doubts about putting a Morgan Plus 8 through a full road test. We’d tried one on an Aero Coupé in 2011, when mechanical failure prevented it from completing our usual battery of MIRA proving ground tests.

Halfway around a lap of our dry handling track, the Aero had simply died. I remember well Matt Prior’s remarkable calm (he’d been driving at the time) when he peered under the cantilevered bonnet and reported that the engine had parted company with one of its mountings, which had in turn caused most of the ancillary systems to fail instantly – and could have meant much worse than a slow, undignified stop for the pair of us.

The Plus 8 did at least complete our day at MIRA, although the lap times it set show pretty plainly where its limitations as an £80,000 sports car lay.

The test highlight? Former road tester Nic Cackett’s summary of the car’s aftermarket stereo, which “would regard your smartphone with the same stony-faced mystification with which a de Havilland Mosquito might contemplate a Hellfire missile.”

A likeable car, but not as good as it ought to have been.

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