This update is a little less about Ferrari’s and rather a lot about Morgan’s: during the second half of our brief summer getaway we found ourselves around the Malvern Hills. As an area of outstanding natural beauty there was plenty of opportunity to appreciate the views of the surrounding country from the top of the hills (especially as the weather was on form), as well as make use of the winding roads (tractors permitting).
Mid-week, we took the 360 for a short drive to visit the Morgan Motor Factory for a tour. The primary reason for using the Ferrari was to at least make a bit of an effort—not so much to show off but more to indicate that even Ferrari owners have humble interests in classic, hand-built masterpieces. Arriving at the factory actually caused a little surprise, as I was about to pull on to the road where the factory is located when I made the realisation that there was an entrance right in front of us. As it turned out, this wasn’t the main visitor carpark but there were signs directing us where to go so I don’t think we were the first to drive though the centre of the factory area, between all of the separate workshops.
After finally finding the correct visitor parking, we easily found the visitor centre and were on our way for the tour. It started with a short introductory video about the company before starting in the office area looking at a few of their historic Le Mans racers. The tour then took us through the chassis workshop (which are steel or aluminium depending on the model) followed by the woodshop where the panel structures are fabricated, before the body panels are attached. We skipped the paint shop (as inhaling fumes is generally a bad thing) but were able to see the upholstery and polishing taking place. That pretty much concluded the tour, which took approximately two hours, with all of the explanations and questions as we went. It was eye-opening to find out how little time it actually takes to build a car by hand (if you were to remove all of the waiting between easy stage). I would thoroughly recommend the tour, as it’s not something that too many people will have experience of. As always, here’s a collection of photographs from all of the workshops as we wandered around.
After a week away it was finally time to return to our city life in the suburbs of London. The journey home—back up the M40—was largely uneventful until after passing Oxford, when we were passed by a Lamborghini Aventador! Thankfully not in a racy way but just a gentle, cruise down the motorway, kind of way. So being the curious type that I am, I pulled out of lane 1 and started our two-Italian-supercar convoy. This continued all the way until the Beaconsfield service station where the Lambo pulled in for fuel and I pulled up for a chat with whomever its driver turned out to be.
Following a quick chat about boy-racers who seem to always want to try and race us in our supercars (much to our annoyance) and about how much petrol they seem to go through (if you’re actually, really concerned about fuel economy don’t buy a supercar) we parted ways with the Aventador rejoining the motorway and us setting off cross-country back to our edge-of-London storage facility.
