On the evening following the V.S.C.C. Oulton Park Meeting I availed myself of a long-standing invitation on the part of John Lindop to inspect his beautifully-restored 1930\/31 ex-Lones Morgan three-wheeler. We swapped a ride in a Facel-Vega for a run in the Morgan, which is still capable of 100 m.p.h. and which could reach 114 m.p.h. in track trim.<\/p>\n
To be wafted up to 85 m.p.h. with lightning rapidity in this “Moggy” was exciting in the extreme, the 996-c.c. vee-twin o.h.v. air-cooled J.A.P. engine pounding out power so that the entire structure vibrates and the exhaust note is a hard, purposeful rasp: The nose behind that engine, containing petrol and oil tanks, is brief and the wind rushes unbroken past the passenger’s head. The only dial is the petrol-tank air-pressure gauge. On corners the Morgan is surprisingly stable, although its rear Hartford shockabsorber, on a hoop over the back wheel, was off for overhaul. The foot-brake hasn’t much effect but the hand-brake, operating on the front wheels, produces unexpectedly good retardation.<\/p>\n
Lindop keeps this historic cyclecar in excellent condition, the body red externally and finished in workshop grey within. Naturally the two-speed transmission is retained and the chassis is lower than standard. The engine originally had a compression-ratio of 12 to 1 on one cylinder, 12:5 to 1 on the other, but now runs on an 8-to-1 compression-ratio, and, with two motor-cycle carburetters, gives about 30 m.p.g.<\/p>\n
This brief ride in the ex-Lones Morgan ranks amongst my more satisfying and definitely more exciting motoring experiences.-W. B.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":746,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,214,64542],"issue_decade":[121602],"issue_year":[121605],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/16225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/746"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/16225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261618,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/16225\/revisions\/261618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16225"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=16225"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=16225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}