Morgan owners gather for meet
British cars a rare siteBy DAVE PAYNE Sr., dpayne@newsandsentinel.com
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PARKERSBURG - It's not often that a half-dozen cars in one place would be anything unusual - but the Morgan is an unusual car.
Around 20 people from several states gathered at the Blennerhassett Hotel on Friday and Saturday for the Ohio Morgan Owners Group's Fall OhMog event.
Demand always exceeds supply on the sporty British automobiles. There's something timelessly classic about the cars, which are built only with human hands in limited numbers. Classic as a white shirt and black tie, it would be nearly impossible for the untrained eye to date most Morgan automobiles passing by, even to the decade.
While there are modern updates, there are many constants with the Morgan automobiles, said Andy Leo, a Morgan owner from Holly Springs, N.C., who attended the weekend event in Parkersburg.
"They use the same sliding-pillar suspension they used on the three-wheelers almost a hundred years ago," he said.
Morgan, in fact, still uses wood in automobile production, with an ash wood frame on a steel chassis. Ash is known for its excellent strength-to-weight ratio.
This is the first year Parkersburg has hosted one of the Morgan events, said Bruce Hardman, Belpre resident and Morgan owner.
Morgan was founded in 1909 by H.F.S. Morgan and the company is still family-owned. The first Morgans were three-wheeled cars (two wheels in the front, one in the back), which avoided a tax on automobiles by being classified as motorcycles.
By the 1950s, the United States became a large market for Morgan and a large portion of production was shipped across the Atlantic Ocean. However, U.S. safety and emission regulations in the 1970s put the brakes on Morgan's exports to the U.S. for many years, Leo said.
"To come into the United States, you have to meet emissions and crash standards. You have a company that makes 500 cars a year and they would have to crash 18 of them in crash tests - that's two weeks production," Leo said.
