Morgan Supersport revealed – Malvern wants you to swap in your Porsche Cayman
Morgan got carried away in the process of replacing the Plus Six and ended up with a new flagship. Morgan’s next decade starts here, with the Supersport
Before the introduction of the new Morgan Supersport, a true Morgan flagship has been conspicuous in its absence since the last of the Aero 8s burbled out of the Malvern factory gates in 2018. The Plus Six has led the range admirably but always only in the tyre tracks of the classic Plus 8, rather than anything else. The Aero never got a successor based on the alloy CX platform that represented such a leap forward for Morgan.
Yet so much reengineering of the platform has taken place in the creation of this car that it needed to be recrashed, rehomologated and renamed. So, the Morgan Supersport, riding on the new stiffer, more focused CXV platform, is a new kind of flagship that’s intended to be the best-driving, most usable Morgan yet made. This is a Morgan that’s designed to be your second car, not your third, fourth or fifth – a car to take the place of the Lotus Emira, Porsche Cayman or even Porsche 911 in your life.
2025 Morgan Supersport design and engineering – more than just an updated Plus Six?
At first glance, the Supersport is definitely more Plus Six follow-up than conduit to the spirit of the Aero for 2025 and beyond. Then you really start to look at it and realise that, beyond the fundamental hard points of Morgan’s ‘approachable face’, this is a very different car to the Plus Six. Indeed, this project started life as more of a styling exercise under the working title ‘Plus Six GT’. But what Morgan Managing Director Matthew Hole and Chief Design Officer, Jonathan Wells repeatedly called ‘scope creep’, lead them over the course of its development, to question what it could be and how far could they go. Now, here we are with an almost totally new car. Hence the new name.
There are hints of the ultra-limited Midsummer, especially with its taller tail, and even the Super 3, with bold monolithic detailing. There’s real function to the form – the nose vent aft the horseshoe grille, that pulls air up and over the bonnet of the car, that’s the longest yet seen on a Morgan. Overall, it’s almost like one of those impossible restomod renders you see on Instagram brought to life – a vision of a Morgan of the future, made real, the rest of the car now matching the technical yet elegant, bespoke lights we last saw on the Plus Four.
The flowing teardrop shapes typical of Morgan have more volume and are more fulsome at both their highest and lowest points, with broader, more confident shoulder lines. There’s more detail in the surfacing, with subtle sinew-like swage lines in the panelwork. The shape is functional too, the taller tail taper working in tandem with a revised underfloor and the rest of the massaged body, to reduce drag by five per cent and lift by 20 per cent, relative to the Plus Six.
Contributing to that drag reduction is the new roof, which completes the teardrop shape. A totally novel design made of carbon composite, the removable top weighs just 19.7kg and when on, in addition to improving rigidity by 10 per cent, gives the Supersport the appearance of a proper coupe, rather than a convertible with an extraneous rainy-day top. While 19.7kg doesn’t sound like much, it’s a large unwieldy piece, so while new push-to-pop fixings make it a doddle to release it, actually lifting it off safely will still be easiest with a helping hand. A soft top will also be available, too.
Morgan Supersport – a more sophisticated driving experience
Take a good look at the Supersport from any angle and you’ll soon notice the satin-treated metalwork of the platform, matching the splitter and diffuser at the rear. This is Morgan showing off its CXV aluminium platform, that even by comparison to the CX of the Plus Six and Plus Four, is totally revolutionised, with a view to cultivating a contemporary dynamic feel in the Supersport, aimed squarely at the likes of us. No really, it actually is aimed at us:
‘I’ve been a subscriber to the magazine since the start and this is my ode to evo magazine’, Hole told us. ‘We asked ourselves, what could this be? And very quickly things snowballed. There was some pretty monumental scope creep.’
What is described to us as ‘a ground-up new car’ has revised hardpoints, with local stiffness increased by, in the case of the wishbones, up to 100 per cent. Global torsional rigidity is up overall by ten per cent before adding the carbon roof, that adds another ten per cent. There’s anti-squat and anti-dive in the suspension, rear anti-roll bars and front anti-roll bars for the first time. The steering rack is 13 per cent quicker and has been tightened and tautened, with fewer linkages and Ackerman geometry. Overall the CXV platform weighs 102kg, or 5kg more than the CX of the Plus Six.
Then new 18- and 19-inch wheels (4.1kg lighter per corner compared to the last 19s) shod in Michelin Pilot Sport 5 tyres make sure none of that hard work is lost in translation between the car and the road. The tyre choice was very deliberate – not too serious but capable enough, with a focus on feel. With benchmarks from Aston Martin to Porsche, in terms of how the car travels down a road, how it controls its body over an undulating surface, this should feel like the most contemporary Morgan to drive yet, by a long way.
There will be variety in terms of how sporting you want your Morgan Supersport to be, thanks to the Dynamic Handling Pack, which knowing what we know about the Plus Four from eCoty, is surely a must-tick option. It will feature adjustable dampers from Nitron with bespoke valving and spring rates for this car. Likewise, we’d opt in on the Drexler mechanical limited-slip differential, which Hole says is for the ‘keen drivers’.
The only true ‘barrier’ to flagship status is that the Supersport carries over wholesale the engine and transmission from the Plus Six, with no bump in power – significant, given the Supersport is 95kg heavier than the Plus Six. The BMW B58 twin-turbo straight-six is strong, though, good for on paper figures of 335bhp at 6500rpm and 369lb ft from 1600 to 4500rpm, sending power to the rear wheels via a ZF eight-speed automatic gearbox. The team seem confident, however, that what will define the Supersport is how it will utilise what remains a sturdy power figure, especially for a car that still weighs just 1170kg. Final performance figures are to be released but for reference, the Plus Six was good for 0-62mph in 4.2sec, on the way to a 166mph top speed. Reduced drag should inform a boost of the latter, certainly.
Is there potential for more powerful, more focused versions of the Supersport in the future? Not to be drawn on specifics, we did hear mention of ‘updates and improvements over its lifespan’ and that the Supersport, in some form or another, ‘will be around for at least the next ten years’. While yes, the Supersport may well form the basis of the first electrified production Morgan, the B58’s latent potential is sure to be explored at some point or another.
2025 Morgan Supersport interior
Everything’s either been revised or redesigned inside, even down to the doors, which feature a new hinge located further inward (mounted to the chassis rather than the wood frame), the shutline of the new door less exposed to the flow of air across the car thanks to the curtain of heat escaping from the vent ahead. That’s a big win given that another big focus for Morgan has been refinement. The new suspension and tyres should make it ride better and better management of the air and improved seals will make it more palatable over longer journeys. The hard top should add to that refinement and also means there’s plenty of extra luggage space behind the front seats.
Inside the Supersport it’s Morgan on its best game, still with the same ultra-high grade leather and new analogue Smiths dials, designed to look like the face of an expensive watch. They’ve even designed a new font based on the original Morgan logo – see ‘scope creep’ above. Detail considerations include the new door cards which are perfectly sculpted to where your outside arm naturally falls.
The Sennheiser Audio system carries over, with additional actuators now fitted behind the dash and under the seats and redesigned door speakers. There’s also now wireless calling and get this, active noise cancellation, to make it usable with the top down, using five strategically-placed microphones that listen for frequencies that software then cancels out. Sensibly, there’s a phone holder with wireless charging on the redesigned centre console, too.
The door panels are still removable but have been redesigned, now released by a further extension of the door latch – a one-finger movement, before you lift them out with very little effort at all. There’s a special sculpted area of the impressively sized boot (thank that tall tail) they can rest in, akin to how the Porsche Carrera GT stores its roof panels. You’ll get a sneaky look at an exposed element of the Morgan’s ash frame when lifting the boot lid, too.
2025 Morgan Supersport price and availability
The Morgan Supersport is not a new Aero 8. It’s not a new Plus Six. It’s something different to the former and more than the latter – still a Morgan, wood and all, but a more serious one, less reliant on outsider appeal that’s a more capable, sophisticated, usable sports car. This is, Morgan hopes, a car you can grand tour in and not tire of, that you can hustle without pining for a Porsche.
Prices for the Morgan Supersport will start from £102,000 including taxes on the road, just £5000 more than the last Plus Six but still a leap on from a Cayman GTS or Emira. The hard and soft-top add £3000 and £2000 to that price respectively. Morgan is moving quickly with the Supersport, so soon, we’ll be able to tell you exactly how it drives.
