The Morgan Plus 8 ended production back in 2018 with a limited run of 50th Anniversary edition cars. It was supposed to be a final sendoff for the flagship and its aging BMW-sourced 4.8-liter naturally aspirated V-8. But today, the low-volume British retro carmaker announced it will be putting the Plus 8 back into production for an extremely limited run of high-performance “GTR” models.
Why? you ask. Well, Morgan says this special project was only possible because a number of Plus 8 rolling chassis, built by the automaker before 2018 for a third-party manufacturer, had recently become available for purchase. Morgan presumably bought them back and decided they’d be best used for developing an ultra-low-production special edition model. So the GTR was born.
The Plus 8 GTR, like all Aero-chassis Plus 8s, will be powered by BMW’s naturally aspirated N62 V-8 engine. While previous cars made 367 horsepower, Morgan has yet to release final outputs for these new GTR models, suggesting more power could be on the horizon. Torque will be sent to the rear wheels via the buyer’s choice of six-speed manual or ZF six-speed automatic transmission.
“Reviving a V-8-powered Morgan at the current time may not seem like the obvious choice for a manufacturer firmly focused on new platforms and powertrains,” head of design Jonathan Wells said in a statement. “However, when the opportunity presented itself to recommission a number of rolling chassis and create an exciting special project such as Plus 8 GTR, we embraced it fully. This project has allowed Morgan’s design and engineering teams to revisit some of their favorite elements of past Morgan models, as well as experiment with some features that we hope will appear on future Morgan cars.”
Morgan will build just nine examples of the Plus 8 GTR, with production starting in summer 2021. The company says buyers will have the opportunity to visit the factory to commission their cars, which is pretty cool considering how awesome the Morgan factory is.
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