Morgan Plus 8 Buyer's Guide
Four tracked Plus 8 sales, £11,500 to £27,600, median £14,417, with two more live as we write. The Plus 8 put the Rover V8 into the Morgan chassis from 1968 to 2004, an unmatched production run, and the market treats it accordingly: values move glacially, in both directions, because the buyers are patient and the cars barely change. Our spread is condition and specification doing their usual quiet work.
What to pay
£11,500 to £14,417, our floor to our median, buys honest driving Plus 8s with sound frames and workable history; this is where most of the market trades. From the median towards our £27,600 ceiling the money follows condition, originality and the more desirable specifications, with the best examples commanding roughly double the entry point. Two live lots is typical: Morgans trade thinly, and the right car is worth waiting for.
What goes wrong
The ash frame is the inspection: the wooden body frame rots where water sits, at the sills, door posts and rear wheelarch sections, and repairs are carpentry as much as mechanics. Check door fit and shut lines, which telegraph frame movement before anything else does. The steel chassis beneath can corrode too, but it is visible and repairable. The sliding-pillar front suspension is a Morgan signature that simply wants regular greasing; neglected pillars wear quickly, greased ones last decades. The Rover V8 itself is one of the most supported engines in Britain, and Morgan's factory and specialist network still service the whole car.
Our view
Buy on the ash frame and the grease-gun history, and treat the V8 as the least of your worries. A sound Plus 8 at our median is about the most dependable value store in the sports-car world: it will neither spike nor slump, and parts support runs from the factory down. The car changes so little that depreciation has largely given up.
