Morgan—That Morgan—Built a Stick-Shift Safari Car, and Boy Can It Drift
Knobby tires and KC fog lights? Yeah, that works.
The Morgan Motor Company might be 112 years old but it's not opposed to jumping on modern car trends. For starters, the English manufacturer is now making a Plus Four CX-T that's "designed explicitly for overland adventure." It's got knobby tires and skid plates to prove it!
Everything's going Safari these days, though Morgan seems to have done it properly in some ways by partnering with the Dakar specialists at Rally Raid UK. It also turned to EXE-TC for a coilover suspension setup, which was designed specifically for the Plus Four CX-T. Thanks to that and those large-diameter Maxxis all-terrain tires, it touts nine inches of ground clearance—slightly more than a Subaru Outback.
Morgan didn't elaborate on the CX-T's powertrain, though we know it rides on CX-generation architecture like the normal Plus Four. As Road and Track points out, it may pack a 2.0-liter turbocharged BMW four-cylinder. In other applications, that engine makes 255 horsepower and as much as 295 pound-feet of torque. While not as high-revving as, say, the Ariel Nomad's Honda K-Series engine, that would give the Morgan plenty of pep on gravel trails.
The interior is nicely appointed without being needlessly luxurious; when a car has two spare tires mounted at the rear with a Rotopax jerry can and a shovel, the seats don't need to massage you. All the dials and switchgear are decidedly Morgan, and what's more, there's a perfectly placed stick-shift so you can decide how much dust you kick up at any speed.
None of this comes cheap, of course. When you only build eight of these like Morgan plans to, you've gotta make it worth your while. Because of that, each Plus Four CX-T will cost £170,000, or nearly $237,000. You could probably build a rally NA Miata for, like, $6,000 but we won't judge anybody who buys one of these.
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