New Morgan Plus Four Revealed With New Chassis And BMW Turbo Engine
Morgan has revealed the all-new Plus Four as the brand’s latest entry-level model and the second one to adopt the company’s aluminum CX-Generation platform.
Despite looking very similar to the old Plus 4, the historic British brand says that the new Plus Four is 97 percent new – also notice how they swapped “4” for “Four” in its name.
The all-new Morgan Plus Four was developed alongside the also new Plus Six during the past four years, with the aluminum platform providing a much more rigid basis than the old steel chassis. Since this is a Morgan, a hand-made ash frame is still present, alongside hand-beaten aluminum panels and a hand-trimmed leather interior.
Power comes from a BMW-sourced 2.0-liter four-cylinder TwinPower turbo engine that produces 255 HP and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm) of torque. Combine that with a dry weight of just 1,009 kg (2,224 lbs) and is no wonder why the new Plus Four can achieve a 0-62 mph (100 km/h) in 4.8 seconds. Top speed is set at 149 mph (240 km/h).
In addition to the eight-speed automatic version, Morgan will also offer the new Plus Four with a six-speed manual variant; that one makes slightly less torque, at 258 lb-ft (350 Nm), with the 0-62 mph figure dropping to 5.2 seconds. Horsepower and top speed remains the same.
Morgan says that the turbocharged engine has a specific mapping for the Plus Four to ensure “optimum drivability and response”, helping them along the way to achieve a 30 percent reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the old Morgan Roadster (159 g/km for the automatic variant).
The new Morgan Plus Four is 78 mm narrower than the Plus Six (104 mm narrower at the central body) and features model-specific profiled wings, giving a similar footprint to the model it replaces. For the first time in a CX-platform car, Morgan offers a set of new, low-offset 15-inch wire wheels that required a lot of work to make them fit, including redesigned wishbones, suspension uprights and braking parts.
Morgan has already opened the order books for the new Plus Four, which starts from £62,995 (around $80,500 in current exchange rates) in the UK, with the first customer deliveries expected to start in the second quarter of the year.
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