It was 1980 and I flew to England to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Morgan motorcar. Charles Smith, my good friend and Editor of the Miscellany for many years picked me up at Heathrow for the run down to Malvern to pick up Peter Morgan's personal Plus 8 (which he was kindly giving me to use for my two weeks in the UK for the celebration). As we were leaving the Airport parking lot for the run to Malvern I noticed a new issue of the Miscellany on the dash and picked it up to scan. I flipped through the pages and came upon a full page advertisement about a MORGAN MODSPORT 4/4 RACER.

Three quarters of the page was text about the car and a full profile photo of it was across the bottom of the page. The picture of the car reflected a very sleek, low profile Morgan that had a special look and flair about it and the text whet my appetite. It read something like this;

Charles had had the car built on a Morgan chassis by Tivey Shenton and AVJ engineering built the BDD engine. The purpose of the car was for him and Peter Morgan to hill climb with it.

The price was right and it said if interested contact, Charles Smith, Esq.

I turned to Charles and said "Chas, this is your racer ?"

He replied in the affirmative and I said, "Then it's sold."

Charles replied "But you have not seen or driven it!"

I said, "Did you hear me? ITS SOLD!"  Ergo!, we had not driven out of the parking lot of the airport and I had bought a Modsports MORGAN RACER!!!

When we arrived at Morgan Motor Company, greeted old friends and walked into Peter's office for a chat after which Peter tossed me the keys to his Plus 8 and said I'll see you in Beaulieu in a couple of days for the anniversary events... he in his orange 4/4 and I in the Plus 8. There was no time to go by and see the Modsport Racer that he had stashed in a storage rental building . Anguish! I would not be able to see the Morgan that I had just bought for some 4 to 5 days while we enjoyed the 70th meet at Beaulieu.

Upon our return to the works we walked into Peters office and he asked what was going on. I smilingly replied  that I had just bought a Morgan I had never seen... Charles' 'Modsport 4/4.

"Good! Go win some events with it!" Peter ordered with a grin.

At long last,  Charles and I headed to the storage and he rolled the orange racer out and fired it up. I jumped in and took off in the racer on the city street for a half hour run. I noticed panic in Charles' eyes as I smoked the rears leaving his view in a full race Morgan with no license plates or insurance in Malvern. He chased after and found me and informed me of the no plates or insurance so I returned to the storage and shot a few photos of the car of which I would not see again for a couple of weeks when it arrived via air in Virginia.

I cleared the car with customs and trailered it home on a Friday. I went over it in preperation for its first race on that Sunday at Fort Story in Virginia Beach. The event was billed as a all Ford or Ford powered competion . When I rolled in to registration I was told by the teck inspector that it was a nice car but it could not run as this was an all-Ford event. I replied, "Well your flyer said or Ford powered",  as I lifted the alloy bonnet off exposing the Cosworth he looked, he started and he said, "er....OH !" and passed the car to run. I took the fastest lap time and won the event over all the Ford GT-350s Mustangs and Cobras that day.

Over the eighteen years that I raced and autocrossed the car it ran 240 events, winning First Place 231 times with 8 Seconds and one DNF. There were also 76 Fastest Times of Day posted with it. Over the years it developed into a faster, lower and wider machine. I never lost but one engine. It blew up at a SCCA event at Langley Raceway in Virginia. I went into turn three at 10,500 RPMS and the crank snapped due to a spun rod bearing. I slipped it out of gear and coasted into the pits stopping next to Sally Saunders who said she felt the percussion on her chest in the pits when it exploded.  The engine always did well because I changed the rod and main bearings multiple times per season.

In the first few years I broke a lot of axles at the hubs when crossing the finish line with power shifts. The stock Capri axles just would not take the power on hard shifts but the shifts were worth a couple of hundreds of seconds at the checkered flag. That was solved when I had Strange Engineering build me a set of drag axles with splined hubs. Never did I have a axle problem again but that put a load on the gear box and I lost a few of them as I was using Rally Escort, Bullet and Rocket boxes and would clean the cluster gears on power shifts if I went for a few hundreds of a second quicker at the checker. That problem was solved by a trip in the middle of the night on the way out of England during the 75th  Anniversary of the Morgan. Michael Quaife met me in Tonbridge at midnight and fixed me up with a Quaife box and I never had a gearbox problem again. At that point the Modsport Cosworth Morgan was bullet proof and a pleasure to drive.

In addition to good sponsors and a evolution of modifications the Modsports sported many colors. In Charles ownership it had been painted that bright orange that was popular in England at the time. In short order I stripped it of that color and went with black wings an baby blue center section a year later I added a dark blue vee design to the bonnet.

For the 70th Anniversary of Morgan I did a wild design on the front and rear wings of the car using the Morgan Winged Badge logo gesign in candy apple colors of red, blue, black and gold. When looking down on the car from overhead the viewed design had the flow of the Morgan Wings. The final paint design was the same as the 70th Anniversary in design but was done in Gold wings on a black body and stayed that way until I parted with the car.

The one DNF I had with the Modsports Morgan was at the all Morgan Race at Mid-Ohio when Morgans were the featured cars at the SVRA event. I had changed the car to crank fire ignition just before going to the event and had gutted the Lucus distributor of all but the rotor button for spark fire to the plugs. In tuning the motor the night before going to Ohio, Paul Glisson had taken the distributor cap off at night. The cap is located on the Cosworth engine just under the Webber Carbs and manifold thus the distributor is out of site. He had by accident knocked the slip in plastic lead connection piece that fits into the metal housing down into the housing. What resulted at Mid-Ohio was during pratice and qualifying that plastic piece which encased a metal center piece would bounce around inside the distributor and crack the rotor button killing the fire to the motor. I couldn't get a grip on the situation because I could not see down into the distributor and the plastic/ metal piece had become a round marble shaped ball from running against the rotor shaft. I just kept replacing rotor buttons (six of them in all). It was something ,l would get 10 to 15 laps of qualifying per rotor button until the ball would bounce up and crack another button and I would get a tow back to the pits for a new rotor. Despite the problem I put the car on the pole position for the race. At the race start I put 15 car links on the field by the first corner and put a quarter lap lead on the field by the sixth corner of the first lap and you guested it the ball cracks rotor, engine dies and I pulled off the track but had time to get the belts off and walk back to the edge of the track to clap and salute the entire field as they went by on that first lap.

The only other time I ever had a problem with the car in a race was at Summit Point Raceway for the First Cantab Cup all Morgan Race. The day before going to that event I had the front end set by the Goodyear Tire Store in Suffolk , Virginia. They had a new computer front end machine. I had asked them to give me two and a half degrees of negative camber on the front. Their machine and or operator or both was not correct and they put ten degrees of Negative in the front. At the event with only several laps of pratice I didn't catch that situation but was able to put the car on outside pole and turn the fastest lap of the race. The situation of that race was odd because the President of SVRA had come over to me on the grid just before the start and said that he didn't want me to win the race. I was amused by that statement and asked him why to which he replied because you win a lot and it would hurt the potential of this becoming an annual event.

I replied, "Well sir, you took my couple of hundred dollar entry fee and now you sit here on the grid and say you don't want me to win the race!"

The green flag waved and with his request in mind I ran neck and neck in the lead giving a few inches of lead and then taking a few inches of lead per lap. I went for the fastest lap of the race on the third lap doing so and then settled back to trading inches. The SVRA President caught on to what was going on and flagged the race on the 7th of ten laps giving me a Second Place finish dispite the camber situation and the Presidents request It was a good race and the other driver told me it was the hardest race that he had ever run to win.

I continued to run the Modsport Morgan for the rest of the season and then started to building a lightweight Plus 8 to race in its place. I sold the engine and transmisson to the the owner of Texas Motorsports who was a Catterham dealer and he put it into his Catterham for quite a fast well packaged racer. The roller was bought by a race car dealer in Florida and it since has been sold to Paul Merrigan in Alamo, California who is installing a new chassis and standard kingpin front end under it upon my advice and is going to run it with a 1600 crossflow engine. He is retaining the Black and gold paint design of the former Modsports Cosworth Morgan Racer of many colors.

So there you have it a real sweet Morgan comp car that gave me over 18 years of pure pleasure except for those two mentioned times and in retrospect even they were a pleasure for together the machine and I were one. The car always was a pleasure to drive,it was neutral in its' handling, very fast on acceleration and would stop as quick with those 4 wheel disc brakes and 4 pot Ferrari calipers. The sweetest thing of all was the precision scream of that BDD Cosworth power plant as it pulled thru the close ratio gears at full song. It was Bocelli to my ears.