Morgan Plus 8

Launched at the 1968 Earls Court Motor Show, the Morgan Plus 8 dropped the ex-Buick Rover 3.5-litre alloy V8 into the traditional Morgan sliding-pillar chassis and ash-framed body. It replaced the Triumph-engined Plus 4 and, in doing so, saved the company: the order book stretched to years within months. Production continued in slowly evolving form until 2004, when the discontinuation of the Rover V8 finally ended a thirty-six-year run.

Beneath the pre-war silhouette, the Plus 8 evolved almost continuously — Moss to Rover 3500S to LT77 and finally R380 gearboxes; 3.5 to 3.9 to 4.6 litres; SU carburettors through Strombergs to Bosch L-Jetronic, then Lucas 14CUX and finally GEMS injection. Chassis and body widths grew from 57 to 64 inches (with an optional 67-inch widebody) to accept modern tyres. The car remained resolutely a Morgan: separate chassis, hand-formed aluminium panels over a steel and ash frame, and a driving experience utterly unlike anything else on sale by the time it retired.

This guide covers the 1968–2004 Rover-V8 cars. The 2012–2018 BMW-V8 revival — built on the Aero platform — is a separate car and outside the scope of this guide.

The Plus 8 is the most significant Morgan of the modern era. It kept the company solvent through the 1970s and 1980s, gave the traditional Morgan its only genuine performance credentials against contemporary Porsches and TVRs, and did so while retaining the ash frame and sliding-pillar suspension that Morgan customers explicitly bought the car for. Collector interest concentrates on unmodified UK and European examples with continuous history, on the earliest 3.5-litre Moss-gearbox cars for their pre-1972 charm and outright rarity, and on the late Le Mans and 35th Anniversary editions that bookended production. US-market propane-converted cars (1974–1992) and later Range Rover-spec petrol cars are a separate market with a smaller buyer base and different price behaviour.