Morgan Plus 4 celebrates 65th birthday with bonkers 225hp special edition

27 July, 2015

Morgan’s Plus 4 may be turning an incredible 65 years old this year, but it’s still got plenty of life left in it. So much so that the team at Morgan have unveiled a special limited edition, called the ARP4.

After being fettled with by the renowned engineer team at Cosworth and AP, the ARP4 features a Cosworth-tuned 225hp 2.0-litre engine — a jump of almost 100hp over the standard Morgan Plus 4. An uprated braking set-up, adjustable shock absorbers, and a new five-link rear suspension will aim to keep the spritely ARP4 in check. These features will complement the Morgan’s already energetic chassis, and minimal weight of 927kg.

Aesthetic changes to the ARP4 include LED headlights, exposed aluminium elements in the interior, improved soundproofing under the hood, and revised instrument clusters.

Founded in 1910, Morgan is one of the few remaining companies who solely produce handmade vehicles, and the Plus 4 is their most famed platform. Throughout its shelf life, the Plus 4 has been pulled in and out of production on several occasions. But despite some significant changes in its tenure, the Plus 4 looks almost identical to its original iterations

Fittingly, the ARP4 was launched at the 2015 Silverstone Classic in England on July 24–26, an event devoted to historic motor racing. Morgans have always been synonymous with exploits on race tracks, and continue to be associated with them via the popularity of the Plus 4 at track days throughout Europe.

There will only be 50 examples of the AR P4 built, with pricing starting at £54,995, or NZ$129,599.

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Thankfully, a few of these cars made it to New Zealand, the odd one being imported from the UK over the years. However, the 1988 British Racing Green example owned by Bill Slater in Upper Hutt was originally sold as a standard car but converted using the full Janspeed kit by the first owner within a couple of years of buying it.
Bill has owned a few other Jaguars. In fact, after he sold his Jaguar XJ12 in 2018, he found himself pining for another and, when the XJ-S came up for sale, he could not resist it. Having just sold the V12, he was not expecting much from the six-cylinder car other than more reliability and it being cheaper to keep on the road. Naturally, he had heard of the influence Janspeed had on the marque, but it was not until he took the car for a test drive that he became aware of just how superior it was to the car he had just sold. The price of a second-hand Janspeed XJ-S and that of a standard 3.6 XJ-S is quite comparable, making the Janspeed version an incredible bargain, even more so in comparison with other performance classic cars — or even modern cars, for that matter — which cost far more bucks for the bang.

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Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
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Morgan Plus 4 celebrates 65th birthday with bonkers 225hp special edition

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