. . For this tour we would be at Richard Thorne for coffee at around 10:00 and with Williams for mid-afternoon for a cup of tea. As we will be passing close by, Gill Bevan will be suggesting a suitable lunch venue in or near Tetbury where she lives and is nicely en-route and I am pleased to say Gill will be joining us. Full details will be published soon. Recently, we have heard from the Head of Design Technology at Pangbourne College in Berkshire, who runs a Classic car restoration activity for their pupils: they are currently restoring a

While reflecting on the year ahead over Christmas, I came across an interesting article on the future of the oil market. It was predicting a significant swing away from oil usage as the century progresses so much so that Toyota, the world’s biggest car company, has decided to end all production of petrol and diesel cars by 2050. Quite a wakeup call: I have often wondered if my next vehicle will be a plug-in. Now I wonder how the Morgan Motor Company will evolve in this scenario and that’s not to mention cars that drive themselves that are predicted to

  I would like to thank Richard and Helen Thorne for their kind invitation to their Christmas Party last month. It was interesting to hear from the Morgan Factory’s guest speaker, Jon Wells - chief designer at the Morgan Motor Company - giving a talk about the development of the latest Aero 8. A key design aim was to bring down its cost by 50k – a worthy goal, I think. I had a good look at the boot lid arrangements which results in tucking away the hood providing no rear visibility problems – a neat solution to an old

I can now confirm that a new batch of the Thames Valley Centre Car badge, as depicted in the logo associated with the Centre’s reports in Miscellany, is now in production. This is the round badge design. As I stated last month, the badge comes in a choice of one of five colours: red, white and blue, which reminds me of those Minis in the Italian Job, plus green and black. If you order a car badge you can choose one of these five colours, but as we can only order a limited number of each colour, choice of

I am pleased to announce, that due to having sold all of the Centre’s car badges, the Thames Valley Management Committee have agreed to order another batch of the Thames Valley Centre car badges. This time it will be the round badge design. If you can remember it, this is a depiction of our stretch of the River Thames placed above a classic Morgan sports car that faces you at a jaunty angle. I hope you can imagine this if you have never seen one. Excitingly, the colour of the Morgan on the car badge can be chosen from one

On Sunday 23rd August some of us were due to attend the Shoreham Air show organised by David & Lynn Collins of Sexmog. Sadly, the day before there was a tragic accident at the show. David and Lynn had the responsibility of letting us all know on the day. On behalf of the Centre, I would like to send our sincere condolences to all the families that have lost love ones, and to all those that have been traumatised. I would also like to thank David and Lynn for their good services. Our thoughts will be with all involved. The