In this interview recorded at the Morgan Cars showroom in Gongti, Beijing, host Bruce talks with Jim James about Morgan Motor Company, the world’s oldest privately held car maker founded in 1909. James outlines the brand’s origins as three‑wheelers built by H.F.S. Morgan to traverse the Malvern Hills, its evolution to four‑wheelers in the 1930s, and the continuation of traditional coach‑building techniques: a wooden frame wrapped in alloy, hand‑cut steel panels, and bespoke leather interiors crafted by about 180 artisans. The conversation emphasizes the sensory, open‑top driving experience—soft‑top, wooden steering wheel, direct road feel, wind, sound, and smell—that contrasts sharply with modern, insulated vehicles. James describes test drives around Beijing’s countryside (Miyun County, Great Wall views) to illustrate how a Morgan turns a journey into an occasion. The dialogue also touches on cultural resonance, noting how the classic English car fits into Chinese settings and the desire for pure driving pleasure beyond city traffic.
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Jim, sitting in here, this is a schoolboy's dream.
Thank you. Well, we're here today, Bruce, at the Morgan Cars showroom here in Gongti in Beijing.
Morgan Cars. I'm looking at models here which could take me back to the 1930s, the open road in England in the countryside.
Well, that's right, Bruce. Morgan Cars are the oldest privately held car company in the world, originally founded in 1909 in Malvern in Worcestershire, just the west part of England. Lovely rolling Hills there. And the cars we've got in front of us that you can see right now is a very nice blue, deep blue with a cream interior Morgan Roadster. Just a very recent car, but the, the lines are a 1936 line of car. So the Morgan is a classic car, but that's actually recently built and built to order for an individual customer, and we're very lucky to have them here in Beijing.
The great thing about these cars is that they are soft top. So, you can actually take the top down, you're sitting there in these beautiful leather seats, and to me, this is the very epitome, the very feeling of how driving should be.
Actually, you mentioned leather, that's from Scotland, from where you're from, Bruce, and I think for those of us that grew up driving cars that were real cars, if you like, where really the driver has contact with the road, we have a wooden steering wheel, a relatively simple suspension, great brakes, but a really nice powerful engine, but none of the new technologies that today really separate a car from the driver. So we know that when you drive a Morgan, you really feel like you're, you're just having great fun being behind the wheel again, and it really takes us all back to the excitement of what driving should be.
You just mentioned that driving should be fun. There's no way that driving in Beijing on the San Juan or the Erfuan could be described as fun, but take that car and take it up to Miyun County, I think that could be great fun.
Well, that's right, and I think the whole point about driving a Morgan is that it really, it's an occasion. I mean, these days, often we get in a car and we go from A to B and we really don't remember the journey much. But in a Morgan, it's an occasion getting in the car, driving the car. In town, I've driven them, they're fun. But when you get out, as you say, into the open road, top down, wind through your hair, driving 60, 70 miles an hour, that's just sheer pleasure, sheer excitement.
Somehow it reminds me of a kind of Lawrence of Arabia back in England, you know what I mean? In the English countryside, the quiet roads, the winding roads through the hills at Malvern, and just this, real idea that you're in charge of this handcrafted machine.
Well, that's right. And I think the great thing about the driving experience with the Morgan is that with the top down, it's you and the steering wheel and the engine and the wheels hitting onto the tarmac, and you can feel everything. So as one person described, driving a Morgan is like driving in Technicolor. You're out there, and it's not just what you see, it's what you feel. It's the wind, it's the smells, and it's the sound. It's a complete rush when you drive a Morgan car.
To me, a car like that is wasted on the Urus One, on the San Juan. That car, thinking of the scenery up around the Miyun, up around the Great Wall, up around, say, Nemungo in the grasslands, somewhere where it's countryside, the open road, and you, the car, and the road is just perfect.
Well, that's right. In fact, recently we had a test drive up at Miyun. All the people that came up and drove the car, we had the top down, you could see the hills, actually you could see part of the Great Wall in the distance, and there was just this real sense of being at one with the nature and with the countryside. And that's really when a Morgan comes into its own, when you can get out into the countryside and just enjoy the speed and nature all at once.
This is again what cars really are for. In the city, I walk or I take the bus if I have to, but I loved driving. And I used to have a sports car, the top down. And there's something about when you take the top down, the sound changes, the whole feeling of what you're doing.
I think that's right. I mean, so often now in modern cars, We're really in a metal cocoon. And they separate us from our environment and from each other. And when we take the top down on a Morgan, we can hear the engine noise. We can't always hear the people next to us chatting too much. And you can hear the radio sometimes if it's up really loud. But you can hear the road. You can hear the wind. And you can just hear the countryside rushing by. And that's really just a great thrill. It gets the adrenaline rushing in a way that really most cars don't do these days.
Exactly, because some of these cars that you'll see particularly here around the Workers' Stadium, some of these really are cocooned boxes. There's not sound from the outside world and you're lost to what's going on around you. But this kind of idea of the car where you've got the feel coming through even the steering column, it's driving.
Well, that's right. In this case, we have wooden handmade steering wheels from Motolita, a company in Hampshire. And when you're driving a car like a Morgan, you're really sort of feeling like you're there, you're really present. And I think that's what's great about a Morgan car. I enjoy the journey when I'm in the Morgan car, not just the getting from A to B.
I can imagine that. But let's go e-bike. Let's go all the way back to England. We're talking of the oldest privately owned car business in the world. That must take us a long time ago.
Well, that's right, 1909. The original cars were actually 3-wheelers built by the grandfather of the current Morgan owners, a chap called HFS Morgan, and he built 3-wheelers to get him across the Malvern Hills to work every morning. 3-wheelers that actually were very, very popular back in the 1910s, 1920s, until only in the 1930s, in the interwar years, did they introduce a 4-wheeler.
These cars, in Initially, they were built on coachbuilding technology, coachbuilding engineering. Do you mean stagecoach?
Actually, originally, the, the cars pretty much used the same frame. Not just Morgan, but all cars— Bentley, Rolls-Royce, even Mercedes— were all built really taking a horse and carriage carriage and putting wheels and an engine on to replace the horse. That's how they all started. And I think what's special about Morgan is that today we still have in the same factory some 180 craftspeople hand-building cars individually for each customer. When we say hand-building, we're talking about actually a metal chassis, but actually a wooden frame with an alloy wrap on it and with real leather. It's actually hand-tailored to the seats and bonnets that are actually hand-cut from one large piece of steel. So the technologies and the craftsmanship in Morgan, in the factory in Malvern, is actually still the craftsmanship and the technology, and indeed some of the same tools are used nearly over 100 years later.
You had a video on here, and I was amazed to see this, that you had carpenters working in wood creating these wooden frames. I'd never seen this in a car before.
I guess if you'd been around maybe 80 years ago looking at factories, you might have seen more. Always leads me here.
