Here we have what is likely one of the very first Morgans imported into Mainland China, a super-clean and classy Roadster Four-Seater, which was the start to Morgan’s strange and unfortunately temporary presence in the country.
I spotted this beauty way back in early 2011, parked directly beside the now-defunct Costa Coffee branch that had recently opened up in the super-trendy Beijing area then known as the Sanlitun Village.
Back in those days, the Sanlitun area was known as being the nightlife hotspot of Beijing, a diplomatic center housing most of the Capital’s embassies, and also just a place that a lot of foreign residents called home – its where Tycho and myself ended up living for a good part of our lives in fact, without knowing that we were pretty much neighbors until a few years afterwards.
Anyways, getting back to cars and Morgans – I believe this example was imported by Jim James, who a year afterwards in 2012 established Morgan’s official presence in China with their first dealership in Beijing, located at the Worker’s Stadium also in the Sanlitun area. This is also where Lotus held their flagship showroom for several years, and was also where two of Beijing’s most famous (or infamous) night clubs were located – Mix and Vix. Further Morgan showrooms were then established in other up-and-coming parts of China, but unfortunately eventually the whole venture was shuttered due to lack of demand.
I guess the idea to set up these showrooms there was that the mainly young and well-off local partygoers would notice these historic and unusual British brands after a few bottles of whiskey, and they would ask their secretaries to go and place an order for one of these cool sports cars the day after while recovering from their hangovers – unfortunately that’s not quite how business turned out, which has quite a lot to do with preferences pertaining to 3-pedals and a gear-shifter, is a story we will go into in more detail in the future…