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MAY 2014 44 Call me a gambling man—provided the stakes are low and the odds favorable. So, I'll bet if you are riffling through the pages of this magazine there is a good chance you like German automobiles (Porsches, as a good example). I would also wager that well before you learned a fondness for such things that you first liked cars. Really like cars. Not as transportation appliances—but rather for their ability to inspire the imagination, excite the senses, and in special cases, the ability to acquire a personality despite their metallic DNA. Much has been said about the passion aroused by Italians cars. However, I believe the English also have long excelled at infusing their motorized creations with a unique form of beauty and character that my London-born mother might sometimes call, "dotty". British history is steeped with automotive DNA. Over the course of more than a hundred years the English have fielded more than 350 car manufactures (many long gone or in a zombie-like state of 'not- dead-yet', e.g. TVR). The list of British automotive going concerns reads like a thesaurus with words like: 'gorgeous' (synonym for Aston Martin, McLaren), 'bonkers' (BAC, Noble), and 'eccentric' (Caterham, Morgan). Morgan. Now there is a dotty car maker. Based on a car he designed for his own use, Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan founded Morgan Motor Company (MMC) in 1910. Even if you have never seen his first design, you probably can imagine it; a single-seat contraption with two wheels in front and one in the back. Morgan's three-wheel design approach arose out of a lean necessity for frugality and simplicity. MMC produced a number of three-wheeler models continuing from 1909 to 1953, when three-wheeler production discontinued—eclipsed by more practical and modern post-war cars, such as the Morgan +4. Nearly 60 years later a British icon is resurrected. I am willing to bet this is where many readers pick up with the story. While Morgan has never been, nor ever will be a mainstream carmaker; ask around and I think you will find few people who haven't at least heard of the Morgan 3 wheeler. In today's world it is utterly unique—like a teleported Flash Gordon Malvern on Rainier Story by David Cook Photography by Conor Musgrave Very rarely seen together on the road – Morgan 3 Wheeler and the ACE