Browsing the internet based car magazines over the recent holiday season, I noticed the following headline: ‘Morgan to reveal new sports car on fresh platform in 2019.’ I think it’s going to be faster than anything that’s gone before; we will be in for an exciting year. I note that Land Rover are unveiling the new Defender this year, and have developed a modular architecture that can support, a diesel engine, or a hybrid setup, or a full electric layout. I understand this development has been one of the reasons why the new Defender has been so long coming. Given Morgan and Defender have a similar heritage in many ways, and face the same issues going forward, could Morgan’s new platform be taking a similar strategy? Only time will tell I guess. Still a newsworthy year, for sure.
I hope that those of you that made it to the New Year’s Day celebrations at the Phoenix Classic Car meeting enjoyed the impromptu event. We are lucky to have such an eclectic event on our doorstep. Hope you got loads of photos.
At the time of writing we are preparing for the ThamesMOG New Year’s Dinner and we are particularly looking forward to Dennis Woods, and learning about his adventures on his walk to the South Pole. I would like to thank David Williams and his team for setting up this enjoyable evening for us.
We are starting 2019 off with something different, visiting venues that take advantage of the National Garden Scheme. Private gardens are opened to the public to raise money for a particular charity. Hence, on February 24th we are going to Welford to walk amongst the snowdrops. With any luck, this will be on one of the last few days of winter before the official spring arrives. Hope you can join us – further details are listed below.
Our ‘1st Thursday of the Month Noggins’ continues to be held at the same location, but don’t get confused by the name of the pub. As you know we started meeting at the Novello a couple of years ago when our home for more than 40 years started to turned away clubs and society meetings. Last year The Novello changed its name to the Javatri Restaurant. Now the pub and website are called The Bell and Bottle (the pub’s original name before it was changed to the Novello). The Javatri Restaurant is still there, and as their website says ‘The Bell and Bottle has a wide choice of reasonably priced traditional English fayre as well as authentic Indian cuisine in the Javatri Restaurant’. I hope you have managed to follow that. There is a large Javatri sign outside the pub.