Wooden it be nice to own a Morgan in Singapore?

Singapore

TO THE well-heeled car enthusiast, Douglas Ng is a dangerous friend to have. The young director of NB Auto has a bonded warehouse at 14 Benoi Crescent where cars can be stored duty-free, meaning he is just the chap to call if you need help scratching that insidious itch known as car collecting.

There, clients' cars are kept from prying eyes. Many are stored in air-conditioning to slow deterioration. Some are collectors' items, slowly appreciating in value. Others are soon-to-be classics awaiting their 35th birthday, when they can be registered and driven in Singapore.

Mr Ng now has something new among that treasure trove: the Morgan Plus Six and soon, the Plus Four.

You'll be forgiven for drawing a blank. Morgan is a boutique carmaker that cranks out fewer than a thousand of its retro roadsters a year. It quietly appointed NB Auto as its authorised distributor for Singapore last year, roughly eight months after Mr Ng got in touch with the factory, just as the pandemic began.

Family-controlled for most of its 111-year history, the British manufacturer has some motorsports pedigree (a Morgan once won its class at the gruelling 24 Hours of Le Mans and was driven back to Britain on public roads that same day) and might be considered quirky: it builds a three-wheeler, and still makes the frames for its cars out of ash wood.

Private equity money has modernised things somewhat. Bonded aluminium now reinforces the wooden frames, so the cars are now twice as rigid as they used to be. BMW supplies powerful four and six-cylinder engines (Morgan has always bought powerplants from others), so the lightweight cars are hair-raisingly quick. The Plus Six zips to 100km/h in just 4.2 seconds.

Besides being fast, the Morgans come without the electronic safety systems that make modern cars so easy to handle (the driver's foot is the traction control system), and are almost a rebellion against the mainstream car industry's headlong rush to electrification.

But Mr Ng's view is that they celebrate the past rather than wallow in it. "Truth be told, when you drive this car on the road you get a lot of thumbs-ups, you get a lot of people taking photos," Mr Ng says. "I think this is a very exciting brand to fill a certain gap in the market where there is a segment of buyers who are looking for classic cars but new underpinnings."

Promisingly, NB Auto has received inquiries from people who have already had Porsches or Ferraris and are now in search of something different. "We are all systems go here," Mr Ng says, but he does have plans to turn NB Auto's car storage warehouse into a cosy space for Morgan.

"I want to create a very old English kind of feel when you come inside here," he says. He envisions a more cottage-like atmosphere for car buffs to hang out in, instead of an impersonal outlet in Singapore's showroom belt. "It won't be like I go to Leng Kee and rent a place and just sit back and wait. That will never work for this brand," he says.

Morgan itself has modest expectations for our market. Mr Ng says he is targeting "single digit" sales for the brand's first year in Singapore. That would suit his existing clientele, at least. Keeping things rare gels well with collectors.