Just when you think you've seen it all in this job (Fiat recovers, Porsche buys VW, Hyundai makes a good car, people in Ireland start buying estates) something comes along and smacks you round the side of the head, to remind you that nothing is truly predictable.
Morgan, yes the same Morgan that has been building the same car since 1936 and still makes the body frames from hand-shaped ash, has announced that it will build a fun-to-drive, zero-emissions hydrogen fuel-cell sports car. Now, if this had been announced by, say, Toyota or Ford or, heck, even Ferrari, we wouldn't have batted an eyelid. But Morgan?
But it seems they're serious, serious enough to release this artist's impression of what the finished car will look like, and to already claim that it will have a touring range of 200 miles on a tankful of hydrogen or plutonium or whatever they're going to run it on.
Now, we would normally dismiss it at this point as yet another crackpot plan by a small British sports car company, one that could actually endanger the very life of that company should it all go pear-shaped. But. But in amongst the list of other organisations that Morgan is collaborating with on this project, three stand out. Cranfield University and Oxford University are obviously providing the boffin power for this project, and their combined research facilities are immense. But the third one really stands out. Linde AG is a German company specialising in industrial gas production (that'll be the hydrogen then) and forklifts. But it's run by Wolfgang Reitzle the former boss of Ford's Premier Automotive Group (Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo and Land Rover) and also a former senior board member of BMW. We all wondered why Reitzle left Ford to go to such an unheralded company, but maybe this project with Morgan could see him return to the car world in triumphant, planet-saving fashion.
We can't wait to find out...
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