This is the new Morgan Plus Four and Plus Six (2024)

External link to Top Gear Magazine Subscription – 5 issues for £5

This, to immediately invite the most obvious joke in motoring history, is the new Morgan Plus Four and Plus Six. They’re the first major update of the completely new cars that debuted all of 18 months ago – complete with bonded aluminium platforms and BMW powertrains. But the latest update ratchets up the modernity even further. We’ll explain.

To kick things off (or indeed pull them up), Morgan has apparently fitted an "all-new braking system" developed "alongside Continental and AP Racing". We’re pretty confident the new system still involves discs, pads and hydraulic pressure, but we’ll be sure to get back to you if that’s not the case.

There are new dampers and bushes as well, which, as you’d expect from a pretty much brand-new car (yes, we know... get your jokes out), are more of a development than a clean-sheet approach. Morgan’s focus appears to be on more refinement, compliance and progressive action – none of which you’d fault, really.

But should a new Plus owner still manage to get out of shape, they’ll likely be glad to find a first for Morgan: stability control. As is du jour, it can be "switched between levels of assistance depending on driving mode", but whether that includes a brave-pill, all-off setting (and if the ESC is truly off when you select it) is something we’ll have to test when the Plus Four and Six officially go on sale in January 2023.

Something we’re perhaps less keen to test is the Morgan’s other modern addition: airbags. There’s one behind the superformed (that is, heated to about 500 degrees and shaped) aluminium dashboard, and another in the steering wheel.

And so it goes that even Morgans now have stability control and airbags... and we don’t have any problem with it. It’s like replacing the coal boiler in an old house – the new way is a bit easier and a lot safer, and it’s only in pretty serious circ*mstances that you’ll even notice the difference.

Which isn’t something we can say about the (now larger) LCD info display in the dash, which sits alongside the leather-trimmed glovebox and worsted wool fabrics as conspicuously as an iPad in Peaky Blinders. We’re OK with USB ports secreted away in the glovebox and modern BMW engines – and more than OK with a bit of safety kit and a bonded aluminium platform – but such overt modernity feels anachronistic in a way we imagine Morgan buyers might take issue with.

While we’re talking about modern appurtenances, the automatic-equipped Plus Four and Six now have "bespoke calibrations" of the eight-speed gearbox, with discrete settings for each driving mode – Normal, Sport and Sport Plus, as you’d expect – as well as hill detection for earlier kickdowns. Or you could remember that you’re buying a Morgan and get a manual gearbox. But then, like we’ve hinted at already, we’re a bit traditional like that.

Where we deviate from tradition is, helpfully, somewhere else Morgan has: the stereo. For the new Pluses, there’s a "lightweight sound system" by Sennheiser. Your knowledge of that name will likely come down to a case of ‘who-en-heimer?’, ‘they made my headphones’ or ‘industry-standard’, depending on how close you are to the audiophile and live music scenes respectively. And your opinions on Shure, but that’s an argument for another day.

As is the seemingly eternal debate over whether ‘New Morgan’ is a punchline or not – and how good of a punchline it is, considering it’s about as new as... well, Morgan.