Super 3 is true to history, yet counts as a fully fresh start.

 AS much as the three-wheeler design remains true to one Morgan has been delivering for more than a century, everything about the Super 3 is all different and entailed much more than merely an engine swap.

On revealing the finished car, set to enter its home market in August for around $NZ80,000, the British brand has also related a lot of the back story to how it had to recreate the product it’s best known for.

Described as the marque’s first “clean sheet” design since the Aero 8 in 2000, this new take on the traditional 3 Wheeler that company founder HFS Morgan first started selling in 1909 came about because Morgan was unable to retain the motorcycle-derived V-twin engine that has been a fixture of every three-wheeler since the beginning.

The make has now gone to a three-cylinder engine; the 1.5-litre developed by Ford and best known here for being the powerplant for the hotshot Fiesta ST.

Putting in a car engine has wholly changed the three-wheeler’s famous snout, but it was hardly a matter of pulling out the old, putting in the new and ‘job’s a good ‘un.’

This time, the engine had to fit longitudinally inside the body, rather than across the front as has previously occurred.

Design chief Jon Wells says modern CAD and CAE techniques were invaluable in helping his team meet the packaging challenges of Super 3’s monocoque body-chassis, especially maintaining car’s ultra-compact body dimensions.

In information related overnight, Morgan has expressed confidence it has succeeded. With a 3.6m overall length, Super 3 is 120mm longer than the outgoing model — thus similar in length to a Fiat 500 — yet it provides considerably more generous cockpit space for occupants in practically every dimension. The seats are fixed but both the pedal and box and the steering column are adjustable, the latter for reach and rake.

One key feature of the car is a pair of novel, multi-functional sideplates, one on either side of the body, which add greatly to Super 3’s versatility.

They play a vital role in directing cooling air into the twin radiators (one either side of the engine), their space-saving shape allows the Super 3 an excellent turning circle and they provide perfect mounting space for the model’s “limitless” selection of side-mounted panniers, racks and luggage carriers.

Morgan says the Super 3’s engine is carried on an extremely rigid but lightweight frontal casting that joins a new, CAD-designed, monocoque chassis.  

There is a similar but smaller joining casting at the rear of the body: both elements are described as “unashamedly functional” pieces that also contribute to the car’s visual character. 

When Super 3 production reaches planned levels late this year at Morgan’s Malvern Link factory output should amount to around 15 units a week, more than double the outgoing model’s best total.