Monday 16 May 2016 5:34 pm

Morgan gives its 65-year-old car a racing makeover. Introducing the Morgan AR Plus 4

There is an office deep within Morgan’s ‘frozen in time’ Malvern HQ, where there hangs a picture of Sir John Harvey-Jones. He was the star of Troubleshooter, the 1990 BBC TV series that made Morgan famous again. “Modernise or die” was Sir John’s advice for the firm. It didn’t.

But neither did it die, and today it’s pretty much the same as it always has been. The factory is like a working museum. Friendly old-timers tease newbies who’ve only been there a quarter-century, and visitors look on as we tour the buildings; factory tours are a thriving Morgan sideline. Come to think of it, they probably make as much money from tours as they do cars.

There’s no production line as such, just several buildings where various stages of build are carried out by hand. It’s built on a slope and the flow is downhill; for years, it was the other way around, before someone had a flash of inspiration.

Morgan makes three core cars; the classics that it’s been making forever, the modern BMW V8-engined Aero 8 range and the smash-hit 3-Wheeler. These days, it doesn’t have enough space to build them all, a nice problem to have. In other car companies the workers would grumble; here, they relish their cars’ popularity, delighting in the fact it’s all a bit more cramped than it was. They happily get on with crafting these pieces of motoring art by hand – still, partly, from wood.

Morgan invited me over to drive a new old car currently in production: the special edition AR Plus 4. This model celebrates 65 continuous years of two-seater Plus 4 production with a radical racing makeover and a near-race-spec 225hp 2.0-litre Cosworth-tuned engine under the hand-shaped aluminium bonnet. The Plus 4 has always been about tradition and tweed. This is so far removed, even Morgan’s not sure it hasn’t gone too far.

The keys to my test car appear to be from an old Land Rover. In fact, they are. So are the doorhandles. With the roof up, getting in is tricky – it’s like climbing into a tent. In the rain, it leaks a bit, too. Also like a tent. The control layout is normal, but the effort everything requires is Herculean and the engine is that of a highly-tuned race car rather than an average road-goer. This makes it a tricky, unusual car to drive at first. The ultra-long nose, ultra-short rear and lack of a sense of its width are all strange. The heavy, solid steering doesn’t come naturally and while it’s not exactly harsh or crashy, the energetic ride gets excitable. There’s also not a single safety aid, not even ABS brakes.

Had this been a short test drive, I’d have walked away without a second thought: it’s quaint but not for me. But I had it all day, for a 200-mile cross-country trip, so I dug in and ended up in love with the damn thing.

Maybe seeing how it was built helped; the love that goes into each one is wonderful. The loud, lively and rapid Cosworth engine proved fun, and the surprising feel from the chassis intoxicated me once I’d learned to trust it. You don’t get this sort of experience in many modern cars.

It’s a divisive motor and Morgan knows it: it expects as many people to hate it as love it. The Plus 4 is the perfect weekend toy for those with an Oyster card and a family wagon for the weekday school run but I wouldn’t sell your Vauxhall Astra just yet.