Revival Cars in Coventry is a classic car hire fleet with a growing and eclectic range of interesting classic cars that you can hire. Perhaps reliving past or first ownership (they have a lovely little Morris Minor soft top) or experiencing a car you have always wanted but know you can’t afford. For many hirers it is ‘try before you buy’ by hiring the car you’ve set your heart on in order to make sure you like it as much as you think you are going to before committing the hard cash on a purchase.

Revival keep their cars ‘up together’ but frequently have customers who are used to modern cars and they have forgotten, or even have never experienced, that the cars of yesteryear sometimes had brakes that required notice in writing to slow down and handling that didn’t always match the power available, and are capable of unseating their unwary pilots like an unbroken horse.

In the case of this nice little 1982 plus four the task in hand was to do a couple of subtle upgrades, now available from Morgan Cars that aim to improve the enjoyment of the car without making any drastic changes that would alter its character.

The essential element of fun in driving a Morgan are that it conjures up a spirit of adventure and a feeling of tradition harking back to brave young pilots driving their sports cars before heading into the skies piloting Hurricanes and Spitfires.

The upgrades in question are to replace the original 2 pot cast iron Girling 14 brake calipers with some new Morgan aluminium 4 pots and to replace the rear leaf springs with a pair of new Morgan Asymmetric ‘Torque Resistant’ leaf springs.

These changes are subtle enough to not change the car but mean that the brakes re-assure drivers used to modern cars and the rear springs allow the sportier drivers to put some power down without having the ‘tramp’ on acceleration that can affect a Morgan that weighs about the same as a sparrow but has plenty of zip under the bonnet.

To do this work MOG29X was taken to Leacy Classic’s workshop in Aston, Birmingham. Leacy are well known in the MG world and are now carrying out full restorations and rebuilds on other cars as well as being the parts distributor for accessories the Morgan Motor Company.

To those readers familiar with the suspension system of the Morgan nothing will be in any way unusual but to those of us uninitiated and newer to Morgan the sight of the leaf springs upside down is at first difficult to get ones head around!

On a lot of classic cars the removal and replacement of a pair of rear springs is a pretty straight forward job and can be done with as little as a trolley jack and some axle stands. I venture to say that this is not a job for the feint hearted!

Once familiar with the process I have friends who are Morgan devotees who assure me it can be done in about 4 hours. And so I watched on as Jason and Dave and Andy from Leacy Classics set about taking out the seats (why are they doing that? I think) and then reveal beneath a panel the front spring hangers. Having then located and released the rear mounts the old springs are extracted through the cabin. The new springs are threaded back through and the process reversed.

Next comes the front brake calipers which is a straight forward process of unbolting the old and refitting the new, attaching the hoses and bleeding the system with no further alterations to the rest of the braking system being necessary.

The result is a car that is unchanged in character and appeal but rides and handles better and perhaps most importantly stops! The results of this work enhances the driving enjoyment for those drivers who are familiar with classic cars, but perhaps goes unnoticed by those drivers new to the joys of classic motoring and who take for granted (as they do in their everyday modern family hatchback) that the car will stop promptly when called do so, the truth is most modern family cars will outperform many of our most loved sports cars of the past.