Lipstick Red

"OK then; hit the Send button. NO; you hit it. Why me? You do it." Finally Kathi (not me, I didn't do it) sent our offer off to Dennis Glavis for the Pozzi Blue Roadster with lipstick red interior. The car was in transit from the UK to Dennis's Morgan West dealership in Santa Monica. The Roadster bug had bitten me more than a year earlier following a conversation with Melvyn Rutter. "It handles like a 4/4, goes like a +8 and has air-conditioning." This man knows how to hit my hot spots. If I have to have four wheels then I prefer the nimbleness of the 4/4 to either the +4 or +8. My only complaint with the 4/4 is that it just runs out of poop about the time the fun is starting. And A/C ?

"Nice car you got there buddy. Say, is it healthy to sweat that much? Nothing personal, but your deodorant isn't holding up too good either."

There were a few false starts but early in February we sent our 1960 +4 four seater off to Dennis.  Our Roadster arrived at Morgan West more than a month before. The plan was that we would pick up the Roadster in July in Santa Monica and drive it to Cambria for Mogwest and then drive it home to Hull, MA. Believe it or not this sounded like a reasonable plan at the time. What would we do with a new Morgan in the middle of a New England winter anyway? By April I had already made two trips to LA without being able to get over to Morgan West to see it. When another LA trip showed up on my schedule for May, I made a point of adding in an extra day: "for paperwork".

I arrived at Morgan West at about 10:30 the first Friday in May. An Aero was being loaded onto a transporter; two other Aeros were crammed in the lot with perhaps a dozen, probably more, Morgans. I bee-lined to the tired looking MX4 barrel-back trike but reminded myself that Kathi would not be happy if...

My Roadster was being stored off-site in an airplane hanger shared by several other very nice Mogs and a King Air. Not bad company, all things considered, and certainly safe.

I got the Roadster cockpit check-out from Tony, a Kiwi that works for Dennis, and was off.

The very first thing that struck me, after confirming that I really did like the lipstick red leather, was that it was quiet. I was on my cell phone calling a friend in the valley and I wasn't yelling. Next was the acceleration. I started up the 405 on-ramp, boosted the revs and punched it in to the traffic filling a space right behind a Ferrari Modena.  Where else but LA?

I wanted to put some serious miles on the car as a reality check for the upcoming cross country adventure. The 35 miles from Santa Monica to Valencia were covered at an average of 75mph. At no time was it possible to forget this was Morgan. Despite the lack of wind buffeting, I was driving with the hood down and the side-curtains in place, the suspension was firm; budda-bump-budda-bump-budda-bumping over the expansion cracks in the concrete freeway, and steering like a go-kart. Yes it does handle like a 4/4 and it does go like stink (I didn't get caught). In the stop-go traffic and the 80 degree heat of the return trip the engine temperature held steady but the #$!! A/C didn't work. Later Dennis said that it is not all that uncommon for the new cars to need the A/C re-charged and it will be set right for the big day.

All in all a great day! Dennis and his crew made me feel welcome; I know that I look good in red leather; the Roadster is terrific and I can wait another two months to take it home. Sure I can. I think. Well, maybe.