Morgan 4/4 History

Introduced in 1936, the 4/4 was Morgan's first four-wheeled car — the name simply meaning four wheels and four cylinders — and it established the classic Morgan template: a steel ladder chassis, sliding-pillar independent front suspension carried over from the three-wheelers, and a hand-formed body over an ash frame.

The 4/4 became one of the longest-running production cars in automotive history, sold across more than seven decades (with breaks for the Second World War and a mid-1950s hiatus). Over that span its engine grew from a 1,122 cc Coventry Climax unit of around 34 bhp to a succession of Ford four-cylinders, ending with a 1.6-litre Ford Sigma. Production was modest throughout — the cumulative total had not reached 10,000 by 2006 — which underlines how small-scale and hand-built the car remained.

Final 4/4s were built up to 2018, when Morgan retired its long-serving steel-chassis 'traditional' models to concentrate on the bonded-aluminium CX platform.