I'd always thought the most desirable Morgan had to be a Plus 8, but now I'm not so sure.  After a couple of days touring the shires west of Morgan's homeland in the Malverns, I'm now full of the delights of a four-cylinder model that has the best competition pedigree of any four-wheeled Morgan.

It's a Plus 4 Super Sports, a production version of the car which famously won its class at Le Mans in 1962.  'TOK 258', which has earned almost mythical status among Morgan cognoscenti, was a fast car thanks to wizardry performed by its driver, Chris Lawrence, on its Triumph TR engine - it averaged 93.97mph for the 2255 miles it covered in 24 hours.  Over the next few years, 101 production Super Sports were built to exactly the same mechanical specification - and 30 years later these remain the fastest four-cylinder Morgans ever made.

Of six Super Sports known to survive in Britain, probably the most original belongs to Morgan parts and restoration specialist John Worrall.  So it was that my journey started at the workshops at Hartlebury, near Droitwich, that John shares with Mike Duncan. They actually ran two separate businesses - John's is Heart of England Morgans and Mike is a Morgan agent and between them they serve every Morgan need.  They sell Morgans old and new, supply parts, and service, repair and restore Morgans of any age.

Their operations are rooted in amazing enthusiasm for the marque.  Eight years ago John gave up a senior job with ICI to spend his life with the cars he loves: he owns four Morgans, he spends much of his leisure time touring Europe with Morgan enthusiasts, he was chairman of the Morgan Sports Car Club for seven years, and he's even co-written a book, Original Morgan. Mike worked for Morgan straight from school and then became a Morgan agent  (the old- fashioned term the factory uses for its dealers) at the ripe old age of 23, now, 29 years later, he's still going strong, and his personal collection of Morgans numbers three cars,  including the delightful 1927 Aero three-wheeler I saw awaiting restoration in his workshops.

"We always have interesting cars going through," says John.  "One at the moment is 'Uncle George's Winter Carriage', the prototype drophead coups from 1938.  The factory used it as an experimental car in the early days of the four-wheeler, and it got its nickname because the works manager, George Goodall, used to trial it in winter.  And we'll soon be restoring a well-known Super Sports: it was fitted with a Daimler V8 engine and had a very full racmg life for 30 years.' Parked outside the workshops, John's 1964 Plus 4 Super Sports looks gorgeous, its 72-spoke wire wheels and lack of bumpers giving added purpose to a familiar shape, fashioned in this case from aluminium.  The giveaway to its upgraded specification is a louvred scoop on the bonnet's offside, designed to feed air to the twin Weber carburettors that Lawrence fitted instead of the standard SUs or Strombergs.

Morgans are in their element on back roads, and the 55 miles from Bridgnorth to Hay-on-Wye proved to be ideal surroundings for getting to know this Super Sports.  B4364 to Ludlow, B4361 down to Leominster, then A44 and A4112 to Hay twisty roads, light traffic and lovely countryside all the way.  I spent a happy hour and a quarter twirling the Morgan's wood-rim Mota-Lita steering wheel and singing up and down the robust four-speed Moss gearbox.  This car's quality of ride and handling is an eye-opener.  With an elderly Morgan you tend to accept, as part of the breed, traits like a tail that's inclined to skip sideways through bumpy corners and a bouncy ride that's on the harsh side of firmness, but the Super Sports isn't as vintage as this - it corners tidily and the ride improves the faster you go.  Much of the difference is down to it having telescopic Spax Shock absorbers instead of the normal lever arms: some discerning Morgan owners have converted to telescopics in later years, but this is one of a handful of Super Sports to have had them from new by special request.' The factory, amazingly, didn't discard lever arms as standard until 1992.

 Hay-on-Wye is packed with second-hand bookshops, some of staggering size.  I spent 80 pound on my motoring library in one of the largest, occupying two floors in the town's former cinema, before motoring into the Black Mountains.  Breathtaking views of Wales opened up as I climbed past Hay Bluff to the 1778ft Gospel Pass, before dropping gently down the other side on the single-track road through the Vale of Ewyas.  It was a misty autumn day last time I was up here and the open hillsides were being trawled by ageing hippies looking for magic mushrooms, but this time, on a bright spring afternoon, it was incredibly peaceful and very beautiful and an appropriate place to be in a car of such timeless appeal.  Back on a big road again at Ltanvihange-Cracomey, I took the A465 up to Hereford and on towards Bromyard, stopping off at the village where Morgan's founder, HFS Morgan, was born in 1881.  The churchyard in Stoke Lacy contains his grave alongside that of his father, who was rector here.  It seems strange to an agnostic car enthusiast that the local vicar has a grander memorial than the man who started a car manufacturing company of worldwide renown.

 After a brief detour to look at nearby Sheisley Walsh hillclimb, I traveled along roads that 'HFS' would have known intimately from his drives between home and the factory he established in Malvern.  The jagged outline of the Malverns, mountains in miniature, grew nearer and I crossed them at Wyche.  The present main road has existed for decades, but the old road that 'HFS 'would have used drops alarmingly down to Great Malvern itself.  Near the top its gradient is steeper than 1 in 3, and reputedly 'HFS' himself would sign off a new three wheeler only if it successfully made this ascent.  Naturally the Super Sports had no problem: its brakes (discs at the front) are excellent, but its fly-handbrake (identical to the one found on a modern Morgan) couldn't cope with a pause for a photograph.  Great Malvern honours its local car manufacturer in various ways.  There's The Morgan pub, its walls decorated with Morgan memorabilia, and nearby the Abbey Hotel regularly hosts gatherings of the faithful, including the Morgan Sports Car Club's annual dinner.  But no Morgan pilgrimage would be complete without visiting the Factory - many customers do just this to see their cars being built.   Plenty is happening here at the moment, with reorganisation bringing efficiency improvements that are taking annual production to over 500 cars for the first time.  A new paint shop is being built, freeing part of the old factory so that rolling chassis can be built on a more efficient U-shaped production line instead of in the present muddle of half-completed cars, and the trim shop has recently been similarly streamlined.  One of the intentions is to cut out the time wastage caused by wheeling cars to and fro through the congested factory during the build stages.

Charles Morgan, grandson of  'HFS' shows me the new 'long-door' Morgan  (a revision intended to make the car more comfortable for tall drivers) due for launch this autumn, but possibly more significant to the company's future is Charles own racing Morgan.  Charles told me on a  previous visit soon after he'd arrived at the family firm after a first career as a TV news cameraman, that among his ideas was a Morgan with a radically different structure beneath the traditional body.  He enthused about the dynamic improvements that could be achieved by making a stiff chassis from aluminum honeycomb and fitting it with all-independent suspension. And here, looking a true extrovert in bright blue with yellow wheels, was this vision of a new direction for Morgan.

Currently it's raced by Charles in the BRDC GT Championship, but it began life a year ago as a
prototype road car.  FLA homologation requirements have yet to be finalised, but it's likely that a production run of 25 will be made.  And in time the aluminum 'semi-monocoque' chassis might be available as an option, just as a galvanised chassis is currently optional.  "Our cars have always had a reasonably flexible chassis which does some of the suspension's work," says Charles, "but this is a race-bred chassis with suspension by unequal-length wishbones front and rear.  It won't ever replace demand for the traditional chassis and sliding pillar front suspension, but it could run alongside.  It could be built in parallel with, the normal cars because it's mechanically like a Plus 8 and we've retained the coachbuilt body on an ash frame".

One other car catches my eye before I leave the factory.  A reminder of what a charmingly eccentric breed Morgan owners can be, it's a tired-looking 4/4 that was driven 20,000 miles round the world last year.  Nicknamed 'Ellott', it's one of three cars that were used by a team of Morgan-mad French pharmacists - "The Three Musketeers' - to tow medical supplies to the I far reaches of Russia.  Once in Mongolia, their mission accomplished, two of them dumped their trailers and carried on in their Morgans across North America, ending up at the factory - where 'Elliott' has remained ever since.  'I'he expedition, over incredibly arduous terrain, was a testimonial to the strength of Morgans: the only modification to the cars was to raise the ride height by 2in, yet the most dramatic problems were in alternator failure and a
broken damper blade.

 Back in the Super Sports I remembered the way this car has been used as well.  John Worrall has covered 20,000 miles touring Europe during his eight years with it and has added another 13,000 in this country - pretty intensive usage considering that he divides his Morgan motoring between four cars.  With its previous owner, Brian Jenkins, the Super Sports also had a hectic life of hillclimbing, sprinting, racing and rallying. Yet in all this time it has never been extensively restored, John having confined his work when he acquired the car to a retrim, fresh paint and some new wood in the ash frame.  He had said the car feels rather loose these days, but I \vas struck by its relative tautness and its feeling of wrapping round the driver like a glove.  I was growing enormously fond of it.

My final stop was just a few miles down the road in Upton-upon-Severn to meet one of the key figures in Morgan's recent history.  Maurice Owen (sadly now deceased. Editor's note) created the Plus 8 - the car that arguably secured Morgan's survival after a lean period in the 1960s' and in retirement retains his links with the company by working a day or two a week on air-bag and ABS development.  He talked about the coincidence that led to a fulltime job for 25 years.

"I was at a bit of a loose end because I'd been working for Laystall Engineering, which ran Henry Taylor and Cliff Allison in Fl, until it was disbanded. I'd bought three Buick V8 engines from Gordon-Keeble when it went bust, and I thought I might put one of these in a Plus 4. I found Peter Morgan was thinking of doing the same thing with the V8 which Rover was developing from this Buick unit - and he suggested I did the job for him. "So I built the prototype Plus 8 with my Buick engine.  It's now owned by Bill Fink and still going strong in California.  Peter asked me to join the company as technical director, so I stayed with the Plus 8 all the way through.  Keeping up with legislation was the main thing, but we did the Rover engined Plus 4, various Ford-engined 4/4s and two Fiat engined models along the way."

Many times in this privileged existence I've felt a reluctance in handing back a classic car to its Owner, and this Super Sports, a car that feels so thoroughly modern for its time, was another that had turned into a soul-mate.  I motored the last few miles back to Hartlebury and a debrief with John.  He is a balanced individual who mixes deep-seated enthusiasm with an engaging disrespect for some aspects of the cars he loves, but on this occasion words like 'archaic' and 'rudimentary' didn't come up in our chat.  Like him, I can now see why the Plus 4 Super Sports is one of the best cars Morgan has ever built.

(A special thanks to John Worrall, Managing Director, Heart of England
Morgans for sharing with us the preceding article. Editor's note)