Television pictures revealed the gentle Peter Morgan in his wood-panelled office, apparently confident that everything was all right and unconvinced, from behind his owlish glasses, that Morgan was a business timebomb that would go off if change were not embraced.To the Morgan-owning community, Harvey-Jones was an impostor who failed to grasp their fierce loyalty The Morgan Sports Car Club has over 3,000 members But Peter Morgan quietly took note of what he said. There was often a waiting list of seven years for a new Morgan - including the V8- engined Plus Eight launched in 1968 - and Morgans became celebrated as the only cars which could be bought new and immediately sold at a profit.What eventually upset this placid world was a 1990 BBC2 documentary in which the business guru Sir John Harvey-Jones toured the Morgan factory and deplored what he saw as the company's complacency. The Plus Four Plus was a disaster, with just 26 sold, and Peter Morgan determined this was the last time he would tamper with the formula.Throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the glorious anachronism of Morgan sailed on seemingly untouched by the motor industry maelstrom around it. The Triumphs, MGs and Austin-Healeys disappeared; Porsches became the preserve of the rich and vulgar. The steady hum of production at Malvern Link - where part-finished cars were pushed around by hand and piles of timber waited for years until seasoned enough to be worked into body frames - satisfied the constant demand from moneyed, middle- aged men longing for a traditionally made weekend plaything An antidote to office life, an alternative to golf. Peter and HFS were regulars on weekend motor sport jaunts, and Peter's car even won the team prize on the RAC International Rally in 1951 and 1952.

In 1962, a Morgan came first in the 2-litre GT class at the Le Mans 24-hour race - averaging 94mph and being driven back to Malvern Link afterwards! Still, Peter Morgan lived in constant trepidation that the flat-cap-and-driving-gloves sort of buyer, his mainstay, would get bored of the simple, ageing Morgan formula and that his craftsmen, by 1959 many of them second-generation locals, would be laid off.So he took the plunge and, in 1963, launched a modern-looking coup?ith a plastic body, called the Plus Four Plus. The reaction was immediate: Morgan was deluged with orders for the staple, old-fashioned two-seater, as alarmed buyers thought it would be their last chance to get one. In 1953, Morgan had finally integrated the separate headlamps of its Plus Four and 4/4 models into the front wings; but, with their seasoned ash framework and hand-beaten body panels, Morgans were hardly cutting-edge.This had little effect on Morgan's sporting prowess. Father and son would work together, with Peter as development engineer, until HFS's death in 1959.During the 1950s, Morgans saw plenty of rivalry from cars like the Triumph TR2, the Austin-Healey 100, the MGA and even, from Germany, the Porsche 356 These cars were sleek and aerodynamic.

HFS had launched the four-wheeled 4/4 in 1936 but, amazingly, the three-wheelers were still going strong, and did so until 1952. It was the best of a breed known, disparagingly, as "cyclecars".Peter Morgan joined his father's business in 1947 after graduating from Chelsea Engineering College and a wartime stint in the Royal Army Service Corps. With two wheels at the front, however, there was precious little of the Reliant Robin to them: owners soon found the light and nimble Morgan, with its V-twin motorbike engine usually exposed at the front, made an excellent sports car - brilliant for hillclimbs and endurance trials because they were light yet robust. And his son, Charles, managing director today and likely to become chairman following his father's death, gave up his own career as a film-maker in 1985 to help run the venerable sports-car company.HFS had begun his car-making career by turning out economical three-wheelers. But, for car romantics addicted to an exhilarating ride through British countryside in a long-bonneted, two-seater sports car, strangely true.Take the Morgan factory in Pickersleigh Road, Malvern Link, Worcestershire Morgan moved there in 1919 It is still there Take the cars' unique sliding pillar front suspension. It first appeared in 1936 and you can still buy one.Peter Morgan was the "middle" Morgan. His father Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan, always "HFS" in Morgan argot, started the company in 1910, after rejecting overtures to become the latest in a long family line of parsons.