Morgan Plus 8 GTR Is the Company Swansong to the V8 Engine

It’s one of the most iconic shapes in automotive history and just oozes country lane weaving heritage charm. It’s always a pleasure to write about something exciting regarding The Morgan Motor Company, and especially so when a new model is revealed.

It has been three years since the final Morgan Plus 8 rolled off the production line, but recently Morgan discovered 9 unused Plus 8 platforms and the company has decided to put them to good use. Now we can see the first of these new Morgan Plus 8 GTR models, which the company say is unlike any Morgan vehicle that has gone before, though thankfully, that classic retro shape is still present.

The Plus 8 GTR has a slightly more aggressive look to it, with beefy centre-locking 5-spoke painted wheels. It looks remarkably like the teasing design sketches revealed earlier this year, even down to the Yas Marina sky blue paint. Morgan says that the Plus 8 GTR is in part a homage to the old 1990s Plus 8 racer, ‘Big Blue’ which was Morgan’s first vehicle with a bonded aluminium chassis. This new V8 beast is built almost entirely by hand as you wouild expect, using plenty of aluminium from the twin exhausts to the 5-spoke wheels. The remaining 8 models are now currently under construction and expected to be completed in the first part of 2022, with (so far) five due to head away from these shores. Some will be completed by the end of this year and will be revealed as and when completed.

Now the reason this is unlike any previous Morgan is because the Morgan Plus 8 GTR is the most powerful automobile the company has ever built. While the impressive Plus Four offers up 295lb ft torque and 255bhp thanks to its BMW 2-litre turbo engine and the Plus Six pushes out 335bhp and 369lb ft torque accelerating from 0 to 62mph in just 4.2 seconds, the Plus 8 GTR with its V8 engine will trump these models as you might be expecting. Twin exhausts and engine fine tuning give this Plus 8 a horsepower improvement to 375bhp. While further figures are yet to be made public, we can probably presume that they too will be an impressive advancement.

This Morgan will prove to be a bit of a brief reprise for the V8, as the limited run of models is very likely to be the last to feature the big old V8. While green credentials of automotive manufacturers are under ever-increasing scrutiny, and rightly so, it’s very hard not to be excited by a new V8-powered limited edition sportscar.

Morgan Motor Company says that it has been pleased to be able to work with its enthusiast customer base across the world during the building and design process, finetuning each model to individual needs. The company describes the Plus 8 GTR as the perfect swansong to the V8 and I have to say, looking at these images of this, the first of 9 brand new Plus 8 GTRs, who could possibly argue.

Images: morgan-motor.com