Mad Max meets Mr Toad: The Morgan Super 3, reviewed

When you first lay eyes on Morgan’s new Super 3 – a three-wheeled car categorised, intriguingly, as a motorbike in the US – it does take a moment to get your bearings. First, in an age when all cars essentially look the same, this one appears to be back to front. Set wide, two front wheels protrude from a bullet-shaped body which tapers off to a narrow, wasp-like tail. At first glance, it looks a bit like a 1930s Bugatti mated with a bobsleigh.

But as your eyes adjust to this unconventional layout and configuration – still strange, despite the fact Morgan began making three-wheelers in the 1910s – you begin to see the wood for the trees. There is no roof, nor is there a windscreen, not really. Instead, it has two small curving glass tourno screens – as you’d find on a high-performance sports bike or a de Havilland Swordfish. And that nods to the aesthetic homeland of this wonderful new Morgan.

You step into the tiny cockpit – it will fit two adult passengers, apparently, although I’m not sure they’d ever get out again – and it’s more like climbing into the cockpit of a Tiger Moth than a car. The echo of 1940s aviation is present everywhere in the aluminium bodywork, the vents and the curves: the seats don’t move – instead, you pull a lever and the pedals slide closer to you.

The ‘interior’ (such as it is, when you have no roof), has been Marie Kondo-ed, so nothing that might not bring you motoring joy has been purged. There’s a digital speedo, rev counter and four switches for things like fog lights and hazard lights. And that’s it. Oh, there are seat warmers and a charging point but that’s about it.

To get the Super 3 moving, there’s a covered ‘start’ button in the middle of the tiny dash; flick up the black switch cover, like you’re about to launch a torpedo, place your foot on the clutch and hold down the button. With the slightest whoosh, the engine erupts into life, and rhythmic burbles vibrate the slim monocoque frame, which quivers around you. It’s like being in a mechanical hot tub and emphasises the fact that this is a pocket rocket, one that you’re sitting in rather than on top of (think Major Kong in Dr Strangelove).  

But it’s once you’re underway that this sporty three-wheeler really makes sense. The front wheels – with their jaunty mudguards – gobble up the open road. The engine blares deliciously as you put your foot down and work up the gears. There’s scant bodywork to exclude the noise, so the Super 3 is pure Glyndebourne for the internal combustion engine. And despite being powered by a smallish 1.5 litre Ford engine, because the Super 3 weighs just 635kg – half the lightest VW Golf – it flies. For context, 63kg is less than a horse. So light is it that what you had for breakfast probably affects the 0-60.

Then there’s the fact that you’re out in the open: on a wet day, I had to contend with rain and wind buffeting me over the tiny tourno screens – which were lower than my eye line. Did it matter? Not a jot. It was pure motoring rapture. Who needs a roof? Who needs window wipers? With the Super 3, you never need worry about them again. Could I tell that it only had three wheels and not four? Not in the least. At 40 mph, you feel like you’re doing 60 mph. If only we all drove Super 3s you wouldn’t need speed cameras – in fact, you could probably dispense with traffic police altogether.

Seeing the front wheels bob up and down is mildly distracting at first but quickly becomes part of the eccentric joy of the machine. Because, rather like being on a motorbike, the lack of a big metal body around you heightens your vulnerability – and it almost certainly makes you focus harder on driving. Since there’s no roof or much in the way of windscreens, you have uninterrupted views of the landscape around you – nor are there body frames blocking your view. This, after all, is a car without a single blind spot.

This is a raw, metallic road-going thriller, one that feels Mad Max and Mr Toad – and, at £50,000 or so, a relatively inexpensive way to fix a windswept smile to your face. The Super 3 is simultaneously the most luxurious and least luxurious car in the world – it is to practical modern driving what our constitutional monarchy is to efficient theories of modern government. At first glance, bewildering; in reality, something to behold.