The Morgans Are Back!(News)(English car available in US)(Product/Service Evaluation)

Byline: MARK VAUGHN

This time, with full U.S. certification

In the eyes of many a sports car lover, Morgans have always been the quintessential example of the breed-open-topped English two-seaters with flowing fenders and front engines driving the rear wheels. They were also hard to get here in America-until recently each one was lovingly converted to U.S. specs by just two shops at opposite ends of the country.

Well, no longer do you have to wait six months or a year to drive off in your U.S.-legal Morgan. Now you can buy as many Plus 8s as you like right here in the States through any of six factory dealers-and you can officially register them, pass smog tests and even crash-test them into a fixed barrier at 30 mph if you want to.

We drove a U.S.-spec Plus 8 recently, courtesy of Morgan West in Santa Monica, California, (310) 998-3311, MorganWest.net (or morgan-motor.co.uk). It felt so refreshing it was almost quaint; we wished we'd brought a tweed cap. True to tradition, our Plus 8 rode on a frame of English ash, "a tub made of Louisville sluggers,'' said Dennis Glavis, managing director of Morgan of Santa Monica, one of the six registered dealers in America.

To that frame is bolted an independent sliding pillar front suspension (originally patented by Morgan in 1909) with coil springs and adjustable shocks, while the rear rides on semi-elliptic leaf springs with adjustable telescopic shocks. Eleven-inch discs with four-piston calipers stop the front end while nine-inch drums brake the rear. Plus 8s are powered by the 187-hp 16-valve Land Rover 4.0-liter V8, longitudinally mounted, of course, and driving the rear wheels, just as God and Her Majesty intended it.

Our brief drive was both fun and revealing. We expected more squeaks and shimmies than we actually found. Initial inputs from ...