Happy birthday Morgan, 100 years old and still going strong

He concluded that it was in a mess. It was too  labour intensive and the company strategy of deliberately keeping the customer waiting was plain daft.

He predicted that if it continued with its outdated business model it would not survive. In reply to his criticism the company employees and its customers began wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan “Sir John Hardly Knows”. And he didn’t. Morgan was right and the business guru was wrong. And to prove it, this year the world’s oldest independent sports car company celebrates its centenary. It has much to celebrate.

The British motor industry is in dire straits and yet Morgan is still successfully flogging a car, the ­Morgan 4/4, that has barely changed on the outside since it was launched in 1936. “We have made nearly 10,000 over the years,” said Charles ­Morgan, a director and grandson of the company’s founder, about the uniquely British pre-war canvas ­hooded sports car known ­affectionately to its owners as a “moggie”.

“The fact that we have kept the essence and the character of the car while keeping the functionality and safety totally current is a ­testament to the original design.” It is also something of a testament to the charisma of Mick Jagger. In 1968 the Rolling Stones singer drove his buttercup yellow Morgan from his home in Chelsea to the Old Bailey where he was on trial for ­possession of drugs. Marianne Faithful joined him on the journey.

The pictures of the rock ’n’ roll roué and his ravishing girlfriend in his beautiful sports car were beamed across the globe and it turned the Morgan into the hippest motor on the planet.

SDLqIf you can strike a match with the edge of your thumbnail without setting fire to your hand, mix the perfect dry Martini and drive a rag- top Morgan down the Kings Road you have the makings of cool,” ­reported the Cool Handbook in 1986. And that definition is confirmed by the scores of celebrity owners who have owned a moggie. They have included King Juan ­Carlos of Spain, Brigitte Bardot, Peter Sellers, David Bailey, Nicolas Cage, Whitney Houston, Queen Noor of Jordan, Ralph Lauren, ­Jonathan Ross and most tellingly Sir Stirling Moss.

The first car the Fifties racing legend drove legally on the road was a Morgan three-wheeler. “I was 16 at the time, an age when your mind is focused on how to make a favourable impression on young ladies. With the Morgan I obviously scored far better than I would have done with a motorcycle,” he ­recalls.

And yet the original Morgan was not designed as a chick-pulling sports car but rather “a people’s car”. The founder of the company, HFS Morgan, was the son of a ­Herefordshire rector and learned his engineering skills working for the Great Western Railway in Swindon. In 1909 HFS – as he was always known – built his first prototype car that was designed to bring motoring to the masses.

It was called the Morgan Runabout and it had three wheels rather than four for the eminently sensible reason that owners paid far less road tax for a three-wheeler (£3) than a four-wheeler (£25). Surprisingly the major car manufacturers of the day did not rate the design, despite the fact that it was the first car ever to appear in the window of Harrods.

And so HFS started his own company in his home town of Malvern and he began entering the cars into races across Europe in an effort to build a reputation for speed and ­reliability for the marque. So successfully did the car perform that it quickly lost its people’s car tag. Ten years later the factory was producing 25 three-wheelers a week and the cars were so popular – particularly among First World War flying aces – that the 1921 production run was pre-sold. It was the start of the now infamous Morgan waiting list.

The car became even more sought-after when it was raced around the Brooklands track and achieved an average speed of more than 100mph. The company boasted that it was the world’s fastest 1,100cc non-super charged car.

It was so fast it was banned from racing against four-wheeled cars of the same capacity. Despite its fearsome beauty and reputation for speed, by the mid-Thirties the ­increase in its road tax and greater availability of the ­affordable mass produced car made the three-wheeler increasingly irrelevant.

It was time for a new Morgan and HFS designed the classic “Four Four” sports car – so called because it not only had four cylinders but also, unusually for Morgan, four wheels, too. It cost £195.5s and had a top speed of about 80mph. (Prices today start at £27,250.)

P roduction was suspended during the war – when the factory made parts for anti-aircraft guns – and started again in 1945 when aluminium replaced steel for the body (the frame was made then as it is today out of ash and needs to be inspected regularly for woodworm).

Ten years later the famous cowled radiator was introduced for improved aerodynamic efficiency. Since when the car has pretty much remained the same looking machine. “Don’t let all the nostalgia divert you from the fact that the Morgan 4/4 is still a cracking car to drive,” said American Car Magazine last year. “If you’re used to climate controlled air conditioning, satellite navigation, multiple cup holders and hoods that concertina themselves into the boot at the touch of a button, things might seem a little primeval, but the car has character and the ability to paint a huge smile across an owner’s face in seconds.”

This week a summer of centenary celebrations starts with the launch of an exhibition and museum at the Morgan factory. And yet there will be some centenary celebrants who will have to take part in the jollity without their cars. For there is an 18-month waiting list for a Morgan 4/4 as the company, which employs 163 people, still produces fewer than 1,000 a year (its order books are currently completely full).

It was figures like these that so enraged Sir John Harvey-Jones. He wanted to double production and raise prices by a third. It was Peter Morgan, the son of HFS and the chairman at the time, who told him that there were only ever going to be a small number of people who would be happy owning a Morgan which, in any case “was more comfortable than a ­motorbike”.

It is a simple philosophy – perhaps the bean-counters at larger car manufacturers should have ­followed it, too.