Morgan Plus Four CX-T

We start with a game of sheep herding instead of cross-country skiing. That’s harder than it looks because two of them are standing still, probably because the border collie looks a bit different than normal. But after a while we become quite proficient and at the end of our experiment we drive the sheep where they need to go. We now look like we’ve been pushed through the mud puddle of a herd of elephants, covered with silt and all, but it shouldn’t spoil the fun. With all the junk we blend in so well that even Darwin would have trouble figuring out which branch of the evolutionary tree he saw moving in front of him.

By the way, to understand evolution, you often have to go back in time. Because that’s where the answers lie. In this case, we’re going back to the automobile era, to a time when Morgan was already founded and people in England were doing something that trialling is called. Those were events designed to test the ruggedness and durability of cars, and as they got better and better, the challenges got tougher: struggling through mud ruts, crawling over rocks, and going up and down grassy slopes. Something for which Land Rover invented the Terrain Response system.

What is the Morgan Plus Four CX-T?

Today, trialling is still done here and there and that is also where the letter T in the name of the Morgan Plus Four CX-T comes from: it stands for trail. And no, CX isn’t a made-up hybrid of Cross Country or anything, but it refers to the new aluminum chassis that all new Morgans, if they have four wheels, are on. This CX-T is based on the standard Plus Four, so complete with 2.0-liter BMW block including turbo and six-speed manual transmission. But the fact that Morgan started mud wrestling about 80 years ago does not explain the arrival of this model.

The Morgan Plus Four CX-T started on a scrap of paper

A sketch on paper pinned to a wall is the culprit. That scribble on the wall of Morgan’s studio was noticed by one of the brand’s investors, who thought it looked good and put Morgan in touch with the company Rally Raid UK. That company is led by Mike ‘Beady’ Jones and Paul Round, with a combined total of 25 Dakar entries. Their company specializes in preparing offroaders with which you can do long expeditions, whether or not in competition. A kind of trialling, but on a global scale.

Now they can weld a game at Rally Raid UK, and they have also eaten a lot of cheese from crosses, but having a Morgan comply with the Dakar regulations is a bridge too far. So Dakar as inspiration: yes. But participate: no. The Morgan Plus Four CX-T is intended as overland adventure, a car for the rougher work. And you don’t have to rig it up like the one in the photos, with those spare wheels and fuel tanks. You can also make it so that you can take a set of mountain bikes, or skis, or you can mount a roof tent and a canoe on it. What you want. The outer skeleton is just a giant luggage carrier.

The Morgan Plus Four CX-T brushes away some shortcomings

Beady, who talks so tight that he could align your front wheels with his speech, tells us all about the shortcomings of the standard Plus Four when it comes to converting it into something you can take off the road with. That’s quite a list. The most obvious: the rear wheel travel. “They hit the bump stops before we started the car, now we have 14 centimeters of clearance,” says Beady.

They simply went through the car with a dust comb to determine what needed to be adjusted. The Plus Six’s longer wishbones have been fitted for more track width and wheel deflection, rally-spec springs have been fitted with four-way adjustable dampers. Ground clearance is now 23cm necessitating longer drive shafts, they have replaced rubbers throughout, 16″ rims fitted with 215/70 Maxxis Wormdrive tires, the whole floor is plated for protection against the rough work, there is a Dakar -spec air intake mounted on one side sill which is packed in a sort of antique briefcase so that there is optical balance with the real bag on the other side. Morgan insisted on equipping those things with buckle closures, and we won’t repeat Beady’s take on that here, but he also hid some industrial Velcro underneath.

The specifications

The power and torque remained with the old, 258 hp and 350 Nm towards the rear wheels, but the exhaust has been adjusted. It now opens at the back, instead of at the side, which would make it much more vulnerable. You also have a set of roof lights, thick towing eyes and a raised hood to provide some more cooling. All in all, it could easily serve as a car for the emergency services in Jurassic Park. He’s great, utter craziness, and really usable anywhere.

Yet it is still a Morgan. You get a little excited when you climb aboard. And he has the real marks of a Morgan. Because Morgans, including the new models with their twice-stiff aluminum chassis, always wobble and vibrate a bit. And they don’t drive very well. You sit too high, the steering wheel is too low, and the seats in this one don’t really follow Dakar’s specifications. But if they did, you wouldn’t be able to get in or out.

Time to thoroughly test the Morgan Plus Four CX-T

At this stage, we’re just trying to figure out how far Morgan has gone with this car, what it’s capable of, and whether those Dakar influences have really been purposefully developed and tested or whether they’re just screwed on for the sake of the picture. Because the place where we are now does contain some chasms. Precipices where you fall off with one mistake. So we start very slowly, to explore the car. So with sheep herding.

We’ve left the doors behind (you can also choose to take them with you, they’re easy to attach) so you can rest your elbow on a leather-trimmed flank while you steer, leaving your other arm free around sheep gesturing where to go. It takes a while before they even look up from their grazing. After which they think about whether they should run away from that funny metal dog on wheels. Because the Morgan Plus Four CX-T doesn’t look very dangerous. It is more everyone’s friend, but unfortunately that’s how the sheep think about it.

The first impression is good

The turning circle is good, the wheels don’t tap against the body, so we can easily follow the flight movements of the woolen beasts in front of us. The skid plates prove to be resistant to nettles, the car quietly ripples over this crumbly landscape while the four-cylinder softly humming shows that it has civilization. And he remains civilized, even if we decide to stir things up a bit.

Steep slopes. So more work for the engine. But let’s face it: With 258 horsepower and a weight of 1,249 kilos (a few hundred more than the standard Plus Four), the tires are the weakest link. Although they don’t look like that. It is worth mentioning now that the CX-T, unlike the Plus Four, has an electronic differential lock from BMW. Which in this case you can control with a few switches in the cockpit.

In fact, it’s going pretty well

Unnecessary wheelspin and wasted power are avoided and the system is really capable of quite a hill climb. Grass and fine gravel are no match, but now it gets so steep that all we see through the windscreen is sky. We prepare for a slide back, but nothing happens: we just bump and bob up like we saw in old videos of trialling. Pretty impressive – we didn’t think the 23-centimeter ground clearance could get us this high.

We’re taking it a step further

We clamber through and over a rock garden and dive into a large puddle, just to be safe with our elbows inboard. You never know. But the wide sills offer a lot of protection, no pebbles or splashes get in. We left the roof on for this ride, but you can also remove it so you’re left with just the roll cage. Which can be quite pleasant in some environments. Environments where it is warm, and above all: not dusty. So asphalt. Which might not be such a bad idea. But more about that in a moment.

In the meantime we have arrived at a rally track. Time to play. Which the Morgan Plus Four CX-T also seems fine. It’s slightly lighter in the nose than at the tail, but a little throttle and you’ll eliminate understeer. Once it starts to slide, you can use your steering skills and the accelerator to drift around corners and play with how far you want it across. And that all comes very naturally, because you are almost part of the car, it feels so connected.

There is less play in the steering than usual, the chassis feels really stiffer and the rally dampers keep the nose on track. His ass, where you are sitting with your ass on top, is a bit more restless, but hey: you don’t get slammed with your behind against the limiters of the suspension on the first bump. What a joy it is to dig through that small windshield, with a view of the louvres of the hood, through this terrain, with nothing but clouds of dust in those old-fashioned round side mirrors.

The Morgan Plus Four CX-T is a wonderful curiosity.

Of course it has a dash of Ariel Nomad, with that outer skeleton and the purpose for which you can use it. But Morgan only builds seven. And that means it’s expensive, as in two-ton-plus-expensive. We end the day a little differently than we started: we are a bit more sandy, have gravel in our eyelashes, a wooden butt and also hope. Hope the CX-T can play a pioneering role. Not as a shepherd, mountaineer or rally machine, but its tighter handling and the ability to cover longer distances with more practical comfort will spill over to the standard models. Just like his image.