Are you suffering from luxury sports car fatigue? Do you find yourself unenthused by the likes of the McLaren Artura and giving up on keeping track of all eleventeen billion variants of Porsche 911? Do you find yourself pining for something a little more soulful with more of a human touch? Good news, the sort of car you’re looking for has arrived. This is the Morgan Supersport 400, and it’s shaping up to be an absolute weapon.
If you’re familiar with Morgan, you’ll know that the Malvern-based marque is renowned and revered for building sports cars the old-fashioned way. Small-batch, by hand, with great care. While the days of ladder frames are gone, aluminum panels are still beaten by master craftspeople, and Morgan’s actually skipped steel monocoques in favor of bonded aluminum chassis construction. Given how light and stiff the latest architecture promises to be, it was only a matter of time before Morgan turned up the wick on its hottest model.
Like the regular Morgan Supersport, the 400 makes use of BMW’s excellent three-liter turbocharged B58 straight-six. It’s a smooth, torquey motor with plenty of juice still to squeeze beyond its baseline rating of 335 horsepower. As you’ve probably guessed, the “400” in the name of this model signifies the 402 horsepower Morgan’s squeezed out of this sweet engine while still remaining emissions compliant. There’s something pleasing about slightly overdelivering.
While the only gearbox on offer is a ZF 8HP eight-speed automatic, it’s important to keep in mind that the Morgan Supersport 400 weighs just 2,579 pounds. That’s properly light for anything with a long straight-six up front, and the combination of the power, weight, and gearbox result in a claimed zero-to-62 mph time of 3.6 seconds. Spicy stuff.
Of course, more power requires more control, so adjustable Nitron dampers come standard on every Supersport 400. If you aren’t familiar with Nitron, you’re going to want them on your project car after this. It’s one of Britain’s leading motorsports damper manufacturers that also happens to develop, tune and manufacture taut yet compliant setups for road cars. Fully serviceable with huge attention paid to corrosion resistance, they’re exactly the sort of dampers you’d want on a 402-horsepower sports car. Revised suspension geometry complements the dampers, you can option a limited-slip differential, and the whole thing rolls on Michelin Pilot Sport 5 tires.
Of equal importance, the Morgan Supersport 400 just looks so cool. The five-spoke wheels are restomod-perfect, the Caerbont dials seem rather purposeful, and I love the rectangular accents on the valences. Morgan’s also tweaked the venting and the lower bodywork, and it all just works together.
Of course, the Morgan Supersport 400 doesn’t come cheap. It’s priced from £112,965, which is about $152,600 at current conversion rates. At the same time, it isn’t bad value when compared to a Porsche 911 Carrera S, and it’s certainly more of a conversation-starter than your typical entry-level supercars. If you live in a market that’s getting it and want one, best get your orders in soon. Production kicks off in May, which means some lucky owners might be able to take delivery before summer.
Top graphic image: Morgan
I realize that manual sports cars are probably hard to find now,I am too poor to look into it,but i really think that would be more Morgans niche. This is too ugly to compete with similar priced automatic equipped sports cars,so what is the selling point?
I’d take it
Ugly AF
It’s not even the old-school part of it that throws me off, because I love the looks of actual pre-war cars, as well as some throwbacks like the Seven, but while some small manufacturers try to make their special cars timeless, Morgan is desperately trying to make them dated.
It feels like, rather than trying to make a beautiful car, they’re just trying too hard to communicate specific time periods that are at odds with each other. The front and rear valences, as well as interior, are completely dedicated to dating this vehicle as a 2027 model, with the iPhone radiuses, satin-aluminum finishes and “simplified” projector housings. The paint is also very reminiscent of flagship smartphones and the Jaguar Concept 00.
This du-jour styling language is simply sprayed in a thick layer over the body shape of a Plus 8 with reckless abandon, and it just doesn’t work, because each of these components isn’t trying to be beautiful and do its own thing, but putting all effort instead into communicating its age.
Wiesmann does a better job of straddling that line, I reckon, but still fails to hit the mark technologically: people looking for retro cars want retro experiences, not paddle-shift automatics (and certainly not 20-inch wheels), but I imagine when all your customers are retirees, physical limitations overshadow matters of taste.
That’s where the Seven excels, because the only place to find short-ratio manuals in the 21st century is alongside small engines, and the manual buyers that are serious about the open-wheel experience can only afford kit cars.
As a Millennial, I’m not Morgan’s target customer. But I’ve been absolutely obsessed with the Supersport. I’m currently an AM6 Vantage owner and would absolutely trade it in on one of these things if they became available in the US.
In lieu of that, I’m heavily considering adding a Super3 or PlusFour to my hoard of mostly crappy cars. The PlusFour is just insanely expensive if you start comparing it to Miatas. If you take the “bespoke sports car” approach, its a lot easier to stomach.
I really dig it, along with pretty much every single other Morgan I’m aware of. The transmission seems an odd choice, but I’m clearly not the demo that stuff like this is aimed at.
BMW has paired the ZF8 with, like, 80% of the cars they sell. My 740 diesel, which weighs about 2.5x the Morgan, runs a ZF8. Jeep Wranglers run ZF8’s. It’s a super-solid, easily-tuneable transmission that can endure a lot of abuse and a lot of torque.
The B58+ZF8 is also seeing use in the Ineos Grenadier at the other end of the spectrum.
The Morgan isn’t quite my speed, but this sort of combo is going to have plenty of parts and know-how for a while.
It’s a solid, logical choice to be sure. Far better efficiency and performance than a manual, and hellaciously stout. I like ’em enough to half heartedly research them as an option to swap into my c10. The problem (in my mind, anyway) is that the car itself seems not at all logical, and the focus is more on experience than performance or efficiency so a manual would make more sense.
Here in England Morgans are slightly embarrassing cars that old men drive, and this one is no less cringey for having a nice engine.
I’m happy that they are still around and making money though. I do wish I liked their bespoke sports cars a little, but I just can’t get over how they look.
is the sexiness in the room right now?
Did Cruella DeVille get a new car?
That looks like an expensive kit car.
It reminds me of the “studebaker” conversions of g-body cars from the 70’s and 80’s.
This retro look with the pontoon fenders and bugeye lights is a lot of things, but it looks too old-fashioned to be sexy.
Early Aero 8s with the BMW V8s are now just becoming import eligible. They’ve been awfully tempting, cross eyes and all.
Still missing the manual.
I love Morgan. I’d only be interested in a 3-wheeler, but I’m glad these exist and I’d still buy one over a Porsche even if that isn’t necessarily saying much.
not bad except for the price. looks like a classy ass miata.
You should check out the Mitsuoka Himiko then.
totally forgot about that one. but since it’s based on the miata, a flying miata LS swap would make it a worthy competitor to this morgan
There’s a lot I like here for sure. But there are enough misses that if I were in the market, I might pass on this one. The two biggest are the big black gob on the front, extra highlighted by the silver contrast inside it, and the change of angle from the trunk to the roof.
But lets be honest. If I were to spend 150K on a car in this vein, I would buy a couple of rusted 30s cars, a Roadster Shop chassis, and a supercharged v8 with a manual transmission, then build myself a ratty exterior custom with all those parts. I definitely not their target audience.
You can make that comparison to nearly any new car, but they are not the same market at all.
…the only thing I don’t like, the absolute only thing, is that 2×6 of an intake at the bottom of the front. Problem is, that’s a major buzzkill. It’s like giving Marilyn Monroe’s face Strong Bad’s rectangle mouth. It just ruins everything.
I get it’s probably necessary for cooling stuff, but surely there’s other ways of integrating that that don’t look like tracing the profile of a piece of lumber and cutting a hole.
That’s horrible, personally I don’t care for the rear either. It’s too modernly swept and has (for reasons??) the same horrible intakes. Exhausts? I would like to see the rear rendered with more curves, like the back of an old 911 or the XKE.
Retro only works if the transitions between the old and new are perfect, otherwise your $150k looks like a kit car.
Is that the real gear selector in the photo? How did Morgan – with their very limited funding – change the gear selector from BMW’s to a unique one even though Morgan using the BMW drivetrain? Ineos couldn’t change the gear selector and Ineos has deep pockets. Remember, there’s a lot of the computer controls and the manual lockout for the ZF transmission inside the BMW gear selector.
The Plus Four still has it but has gotten so many complaints I’m sure an effort to eliminate it has been in the works at Morgan for a while. Some Morgan owners have retrofitted their own alternatives.
The much higher price point of the Supersports likely justifies the move. And with the Plus Four you can still opt for the manual.
The ZF 8HP is an amazing transmission. It does its thing well no matter if it’s slushing through traffic or banging off redline shifts. ZF and BMW nailed it. It’s going to lead an easy life even with 400 hp on tap. That Morgan doesn’t weigh two tons like most vehicles the 8HP is used in. With that transmission handling shifting duties, my attention can be on proper hooliganism while keeping an eye out for the rozzers.
This one’s better than most, but the retro-contemporary design thing always looks kinda cartoonish to me. Literally, like it’s a car you’d see in an animated adventure show. It seems very hard to get it right.
Thinking about it, I hate to say it, but the PT Cruiser is perhaps one of the best examples of how to actually pull it off well.
This is incredibly stupid and I have the utmost respect for anyone who spends their $150,000 on one. I’m sure Morgan ownership is an absolute nightmare, and you’re going to draw a crowd everywhere you go in one of these…but I’ll be damned if it isn’t a whole hell of a lot more interesting than another grayscale 911
That’s not how it works in the Mustang world.
I love that color, and this interests me as a fun car that as you say truly will get looked at, but I don’t love the 3/4 view with that back window for some reason. It looks bulgy to me and reminds me of a Beetle but not in a good way. I’m going to go look at other pictures to see if it looks that way just in that photo.
To me, that rear 3/4 view is very “older 911” I think? I’m not even sure which one specifically. It just gives me some older porsche vibes, but like they skewed the photo of the old porsche and stretched it vertically only. I can’t decide if like it, i’m ok with it, or dislike it. Its weirding out my brain.
I’m with you Thomas, I really dig the way they dialed this car back to more simpler surfacing. I’d love to see a version that does away with the “running board” element. I know that’s not quite in the Morgan form vocabulary, but I think it would look pretty cool.
I’m not a fan of the “edgy” modern touches Morgan seems to feel compelled to do these days – no bumper, gaping hole instead of a grille, the headlights that look like a kid tried to upgrade a hand-me-down ’85 Ranger with the cheapest LEDs at AutoZone
By making it look like something from 1938? Who desires that?
I DO like the colour though, reminds me of this one I had as a kid
Right? I’d love to afford a hand-built, powerful, blast-to-drive sports coupe but why make it look like this Dump Truck-assed pastiche of Cruella De Vil’s car?
I agree in part. This looks like any other Morgan, and while I understand that it may appeal to some, it is not my cup of tea.
Still desirable because it is different. Or better: eccentric.
But I would buy a Morgan, that would be a 3 wheeler. After they moved the engine inside the body it looks even better.
Yes, I’d love to test drive a Super 3 but my suspicion is: want!
Is harking back to a different era problematic as an idea? I don’t understand your complaint. Do you hate nostalgia, hate the 30s, or hate THIS particular attempt at it?
And to answer your question, lots of people, me included. I love the look of many 30s cars. I fully appreciate why anyone might want to buy a new car with that aesthetic.
Someone born in 1938 – or 1948 – is almost too old to drive now. I haven’t really seen any generational shift in Morgans yet, like it happened with Harley WLCs, or Series Landrovers, or even MBGs or many others, Morgans are always driven by really old guys. Around here (northern EU) at least..
Have nothing against retro cars, I own a 1991 Figaro, which partly looks like something from 1958. And my 356 was designed in 1948, but it’s not retro, just very old 🙂
It’s more early postwar looking than prewar as the fenders are more integrated into the body and it harkens back to the +4 of 1950, which was only slightly anachronistic at the time.
I always thought that the classic Morgan look, with the long front fenders, started with 4/4 in 1936 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_4/4
But due to hard times post-WW2, where people had other things to do than design cars, everything was a bit conservative looking in Europe for a long time, with very pre-war styled cars like the Ford Popular, Citroën TA and MG TF running well into the 50ies. So for MANY years Morgan fit right in 🙂
The +4 was actually built off and on until a few years ago, but design-wise, the 4/4 was more primitive with separate fenders, though the +4 was certainly a development of the prewar car’s looks.
Morgan did make an enveloping body car, the +4+, and nobody bought it. While I get its lack of success being discouraging, I wonder what something new based more on those lines might look like or how it might do (probably still poorly).