Lots of us consider ourselves to be partial car designers; who didn't sketch supercars on their notebooks at school? But in the real world, most of us know precious little about what goes into the increasingly complicated process that is automotive engineering.
Which is why the input of future generations is so heart-warming to witness, especially when supported by universities and colleges - and even more so when manufacturers provide the opportunity to work on real-world product. Anything to stop them instagramming their avocados and dancing on TikTok.
Cue the new Plus Four motorsport variant, developed alongside the University of Wolverhampton's School of Engineering and its very own racing team, UWR. It arrives as part of Morgan's continuous model-development programme, but the wider project is also aimed at supporting education and training, and feeding students or school leavers into Morgan's apprenticeship scheme.
Two cars have been developed to compete in a host of club-level sprint and endurance championships, including the Morgan Challenge, and will feature in the rest of the 2021 season. UWR has provided the modifications and upgrades ready for the race, and will work trackside and in the workshop, helping train students for a motorsport or automotive engineering future.
Speaking of the cars themselves, these examples are based on the bonded-aluminium CX-Generation platform, which weighs just 97kg and offers twice the structural rigidity of Morgan's previous aluminium platform. There's also bespoke wishbone suspension and a BMW-sourced powertrain. Morgan says customer race cars can be built to order.
The motorsport-focused variant remains fully road legal, comes with a choice of manual or automatic transmissions, and can be driven to and from a circuit of your choosing. This all pays homage to Morgan's Le Mans winner from 1962, that finished the race and drove straight back home to Malvern, Worcestershire. A cool car made by cool young people - it's what we love to see.
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