It is with deep sadness that I report the passing of Bill Smallwood. Bill was one of the earliest members of the Centre and was well known and had many friends. He was in fact the first treasurer for the Centre. Bill and his wife Kathie enjoyed their red 4/4 with its four seats; having many trips away while taking part in Centre events whenever they could. Sadly, in recent years they had to give up their Morgan but they had many happy memories and had many friends in the World of Morganeering. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend Bill’s

This month we plan to visit The Vyne on Sunday April 24th. We are planning to visit the house and its beautiful woodlands. Please meet at 11.00 am in the main car park for The Vyne As you will probably remember, Tim Jones’ first Thames Tour on 8th May will cover the river and crossing points from Lechlade to Dorchester on Thames (but avoiding Oxford for traffic reasons). This is a very picturesque stretch of river and the low bridge at Osney in Oxford means that large and tall boats cannot get to this meandering rural area. Full details will

. . 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