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NEW CARS TESTED AND RATED

Olde-worlde charm meets modern tech in revised manual-specced roadster

FIRST DRIVES

Ispent some time in BMW’s new manual Z4 before driving the latest Morgan Plus Four. Self-shifting, rear-driven drop-tops are a vanishingly rare breed south of £100k, so the comparison would have invited itself anyway, but it’s especially relevant here because Morgan has been offering manual Z4s – of a sort – for years.

Here’s one now. The Plus Four uses the 2.0-litre turbo four from the entry-level Z4 but unlike that car can be specified with a sixspeed manual. It has been updated for 2024 but still looks mostly the same as the 1955 4/4 from which it’s loosely descended (even if the only real physical connection between the two these days is the continued use of ash wood for the frame).

The Plus Four is only four years into its current era, having switched onto an aluminium monocoque in 2020 and been zhuzhed up a couple of years later. This latest update is rather subtler: there are new onepiece light clusters at each end, the splitters are now less prominent for being painted matt black and the mirrors are lighter aluminium items. There has also been a bit of chassis fettling (which we will come onto) and the optional Sennheiser sound system has been improved.