The Morgan Motor Company is well known for its bespoke, handcrafted cars which have been made in Malvern, Worcestershire since 1909. If you have a love of fine cars, especially Morgan cars, or are interested in how things are made, then a factory tour would be an enjoyable and interesting experience.
Booking for the Morgan Factory Tour
It’s well worth booking in advance. I only booked the day before, but I went in September so it wasn’t the busiest time of year. To be sure of getting a place, it would be better to book further in advance. Also, if you want to book in for an experience drive or passenger ride, or even an afternoon tea in the onsite cafe, you’d be well advised to reserve your slot ahead of time.
Guided factory tours start from the Morgan Experience Centre. They operate tours from Monday – Thursday throughout the day and on Friday and Saturday mornings. Please note that the factory is not in production on Saturdays and therefore you will not see any Morgans being manufactured, however you will still see all parts of the factory, guided by one of their knowledgeable tour guides. Factory tours start and finish at the Morgan Experience Centre, Spring Lane, Malvern, WR14 2LS.
Arrival
You are asked to arrive 10-15 minutes early for your experience, to allow time to check in. There’s plenty of car parking at the visitor centre. If you arrive earlier you can have a look around the Morgan Shop or to grab a drink and a bite to eat in the Morgan Experience Cafe. You can wait in the cafe area and there is very comfortable seating. There are usually some Morgan cars in the car park that you can take a look at before you go in too. Cars that are for sale are in the showroom and these are well worth a look too.
Tour
The tour starts with being provided with an ear piece/headset to make it easy to hear the guide. I have no particular hearing issues and I found they worked well for me. We started with a short history of the company with pictures, commentary from our guide and film footage. The tour group was quite small and they aim to keep it at no more than 18 visitors.
Next you go through to the factory and see the various stages of the process. Essentially, you are following cars through the production line and they will start out with the body being constructed and then proceed through the various stages to the finished, high quality product. It’s soon very clear that all Morgans are bespoke and there are so many different combinations of colour and features, although there are only a few models. As you go round the various factory buildings, you will need to walk behind a line to keep you away from the cars, but because the buildings are quite small in scale for a factory, you will be able to get quite close to the cars and be able to see well.
Along the way you’ll be able to see a number of cars in museum buildings. There is also quite a lot of memorabilia as well as more cars to see in the last building of the tour, where your guide will leave you and you can take as long as you like to look around.
In total, the tours last up to 2 hours.
What did I think
I really enjoyed the tour and I’d consider going again in the future, but probably a few years down the line. Next time I think I’d be booking in for either an experience drive or passenger ride as it would be wonderful to motor around the glorious scenery of the Malvern Hills.
It’s such a pleasure to see cars being made with such care and attention to detail. You can see real craftsmen and women at work.
Disclosure: I paid for my own entry to the Morgan Factory Tour.
Leave a Reply