The Morgan Motor Company designed a modern coupe, the Aeromax | Hacker News Reader

The Morgan Motor Company designed a modern coupe, the Aeromax

arstechnica.com

57 pointsrobin_reala30 comments

Perhaps useful to note that the car itself was released 18 years ago. It's just this article about the design process that's contemporary.

I really wanted one of these when they came out. Now I'd much rather have one of their classic three-wheelers... The mid-2000s styling still looks okay but hasn't aged gracefully. (Or it might just be the silver paint that seemed so cool on everything in the mid-2000s!)

Very, very little in the automotive world from the mid 2000's aged well.

That was the age of:

- The Alfa-Romeo 147 which looked like it had fetal alcohol syndrome and the 156 which looked like it was inspired by a parrotfish

- Audi taking the wildly successful and good-looking A4/S4 and instead of a refinement of the design instead bloated it up and radically reworked it into monstrosity. Ditto for the C5 platform A6; another huge redesign, which also looked like garbage.

- Chris Bangle at BMW managing to ruin one of the most iconic, good-looking luxury performance cars (the E38 7-series) which BMW only slightly refined for several generations until it finally looked half-passable.

- Mercedes W210 and W220 platforms. Two of the ugliest, most cheaply/poorly-built Mercedes ever made

- Porsche going from one of the most iconic, good-looking sports cars of all time - the 933 - the absolute monstrosity that was the 996, and I'm not talking about it being water-cooled. And then there was the Cayenne, which Jeremy Clarkson said was an incredible technical achievement but he wouldn't be caught dead in it, and famously joked would frighten its owners children: https://youtu.be/z97PYF9QWFY?t=283

- VW, a bit late to the game but going from the gorgeous Mk4 Jetta and Golf to the hideous Mk5's. Don't even get me started on how fugly the Passat was, both the horrid Mk3 to the somehow-even-worse B5

A few notable exceptions:

- The Corvette C5, which was a massive step up in Chevrolet's game. The Corvette went from looking like an econobox with a big hood to "sports car", and it had the handling and power to match.

- The Mazda MX-5 NB and NC

- The Mk4 Jetta

>- The Mazda MX-5 NB and NC

lots of people complain about the NC but I've rarely seen complaints about the NB. it's a baby viper!

Good rundown... I was about to say I skipped the whole decade going from 80s and 90s cars directly to a 2010s car, but unlike the other mk6 Jettas the wagon version (my current car) was really just a heavily facelifted mk5.

The mk4 Jetta was really a great car. My parents both had them in the late 00s and we all loved them, but always kind of wished one of them was a wagon.

Looks kinda cool, but I think I would prefer it swing the pendulum farther towards the old school if I were in the market… it’s kinda stuck looking like a ultra premium pt cruiser instead of an ultra premium prowler

Genuine question, did you mean that to be opposite? That is, it looks like a prowler?

I'm looking at photos of the aeromax compared to the PT cruiser and the prowler. It doesn't look anything like a PT cruiser to me, whereas it does have the same body style as a prowler. That being a long front/hood and the cabin towards the rear.

Unless there are some design features not noticing.

Yeah the general shape is more prowler than pt cruiser, but the body smoothing and covering over everything looks pt cruiser to me… I really like the open wheels of the prowler.

(What I’m really looking for though is take e.g. the car from Downton Abbey and, while changing the look as little as possible, change the materials and safety and efficiency to be as modern as possible.)

The Excalibur was exactly that, they were made in Milwaukee until 1990. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excalibur_(automobile)

Nice

Their current Plus 4 might be more like what you're after. It's definitely a lot closer to the original styling.

Oh yeah. That’s the ticket

I knew Matthew's brother years ago and met him a few times, he now does pretty cool (and reasonably priced) watches: https://www.mhdwatches.com/

For those in the NoVA/DC area, their is a Morgan repair place that used to sell Morgans: http://morganscustomclassics.com/

Looks like they aren't an official dealer anymore, but I would guess they might broker used car deals on occasion. I had been there a long time ago and test drove a Morgan. Impracticable but fun which is what a sports coupe should be I guess.

Bespoke British sportscars built on small scale in an industrial park selling less than 100 a year to British old money who think owning a Porsche, Rolls Royce Maybach,BMW,Mercedes is too mundane or a Ferrari or Lamborghini is too garish.

Lot's of them faded over the years such as Bristol Cars and TVR.

I really don't think "British old money" was the target market for TVR?

"Oligarch's rotten 20 year old sons" seems more accurate.

I remember a time where I was looking for a sensible family car and almost bought a Cerbera 4.5. I ended up buying a BMW that I hated...

I would guess you'd hate the Cerbera for different reasons. Much more exciting to drive undoubtedly, but also exciting because you never know if you're going to make it to your destination on time.

That was the joke about TVR's repeated on Top Gear anyways.

But James May said on the Top Gear British Sports car segment that there had been no reported cases of a TVR ever breaking down!

I hated the BMW - in and out of the dealers getting fixed and very uncomfortable.

I might be thinking of the couple TVR Tuscan segments they did.

All the articles on british motoring sites make specific reference to reliability problems:

https://www.evo.co.uk/tvr/tuscan/22788/tvr-tuscan-1999-2006-...

"TVRs have always been love-or-hate cars and the lack of safety features such as ABS or traction control will immediately deter some, as will stories of endless breakdowns."

https://archive.is/VylZ5

That whole article, lol.

I recall from Evo Magazine where they did a European press tour with AMG and TVR and the AMG technicians at one factory stop had a look under the hood of the TVR - they just laughed at how badly it was put together and see if they could help fix it when it inevitably something on it broke.

I reckon most owners considered it a quirk of owning one and besides they always had the Aston Martin on those off days.

Wrong. Just plain wrong.

TVR back in the day was literally for British hooligans. The car was built on a small scale in Blackpool of all places to compete with much higher-end manufacturers.

The fact that the end game for TVR was handled so poorly doesn't and should never retroactively change what the company's mission was, which was to build powerful British-style sports cars for enthusiasts.

Being a Blackpool lad myself - the first day I saw a TVR Tuscan roll out of the Bispham factory will be something I never forget.

They were working class heroes back in the day. They were approaching affordable for a lot of people, raw, powerful and styled in an otherworldly way.

The loss of TVR is a loss for all car enthusiasts. I don't think we'll see another manufacturer like them.

Same could be said of the Bristol Fighter - a Dodge Viper with better road manners in disguise.

They've kept their price fairly well:

https://www.carandclassic.com/search?source=search-bar&make=...

If you can go visit their factory. Wonderful meeting of old craft with new motors

If something like that had an electric motor, I'd want it.

> The finished product went down well—it came with a 4.4 L V8 motor packing 333 hp (248 kW) and 332 lb-ft (450 Nm), and it made an incredible noise.

I would much rather a nice big V8

Technically that's a small V8 by most American sports car and truck standards.

There's a guy on YouTube who is building an electric jag of the same body style.

He points out that ev's need great aero. And you would literally be better off driving the thing in reverse.

Driving it forward is basically like driving a big brick in the wind.

Superfastmatt is the yt'er

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