So, Do You Hang It on the Wall or Take It Out for a Spin?

The 1999 Morgan Plus 8 is a perfect replica of its antique, essential self.

Doorsills show dints in their aluminum scuff plates because after more than 60 years they are still attached by tacks and a ball-peen hammer. Same medieval ladder chassis, same six dozen cooling louvers on a hood still held by spring-loaded toggle latches. And it is the only car since those other barmy Brits--the Allards and MGs of the ‘40s and ‘50s--that still has its spare wheel mounted naked to breezes on the outside of the car.

There are no door locks, no trunk, no anti-lock brakes and wire-spoked wheels if you ask for them. But don’t bother asking about air conditioning, power steering, automatic transmission or a power top.

Much of the Plus 8’s framework remains hand-screwed and -glued from kiln-dried and Cuprinol-cured ash wood (ever had to bag a car for termites?) because that’s the way it has been since 1936, when H.F.S. Morgan used local woods to build the first Morgan 4/4 and create a cottage industry among the real cottages in the bucolic county of Worcestershire, England.

But here’s something new:

The Morgan Plus 8 is now available in the United States, where, reduced to the status of undesirable alien by federal emissions and safety standards, it hadn’t been seen since the early ‘70s.

These are not gray-market Morgans cobbled into left-hand drivers with jury-rigged emission controls and side-impact beams. Nor cars skirting to satisfy the feds by having propane-fueled engines under their elegant snouts.

No, these Plus 8s are factory fresh, factory shipped, federally legal and sold on the West Coast by factory friend Bill Fink of Isis Imports Ltd. of San Francisco (https://www.morgancars-usa.com).

And here’s something that for Morgan is practically revolutionary:

The new Plus 8 has a pair of air bags and an engine the federal government likes: a 4.0-liter V-8 engine conceived by Buick and fostered by Land Rover and delivering 190 horsepower. Which becomes an almighty amount of urge for a lightweight, aluminum-rich, two-seater Morgan weighing only 2,250 pounds. Or exactly half the tonnage of the Land Rover Discovery this same engine was built to propel.

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To pedants and the unromantic, a Morgan makes about as much sense as vegan meatloaf. Why pay $59,000--or $64,000 with alloy wheels, gas guzzler and luxury taxes and a sound system you can’t hear if your Morgan is being driven correctly? Indeed, why pay anything for the displeasure of being crammed into a car that denies ergonomics and defies most technologies developed after the reign of Henry VIII?

Because to lovers of the sport and passions of driving, this is how European motoring and sports cars began. As with lacrosse and hiking Exmoor in November, where are the physical achievement and spiritual satisfaction in challenges conquered with ease and in comfort?

There are mild concessions, but no real compromises, to building or driving Morgans. Elements are not shut out, because their presence adds to the purity of the experience.

The Plus 8 has a trio of dinky windshield wipers that couldn’t swat flies. Rain, that British tradition, still dribbles between the convertible top and the windshield frame and makes rivulets on the inside of the glass.

Driving is elemental and hazardous to knees, elbows and other human hinges that are opposed to being bent double. Again, why volunteer for this British Inquisition?

Because these are the ingredients of motoring fraternities and full membership in the Morgan cult. Driving a “Moggy” is a way to dissolve daily humdrum and keep weekend adventures alive--and one helluva excuse for owning a Royal Air Force sheepskin flying jacket, string-backed gloves and a tweed cap from Harrods.

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So we rolled into the Plus 8 in the aforementioned jacket, looking like the Michelin Man, ready for rain that washed PCH at Huntington State Beach and cold that chilled the rest of the day.

We kept the top down.

We got soaked and wind-chafed, and went back for more on twistier roads and worse conditions.

And we exhilarated to every minute in the Plus 8, whose looks and attachments are from history but whose V-8 produces performance not too removed from that of a Chevrolet Corvette.

Steering is biased toward stiff and heavy. Like a relic from the early days of racing at Brooklands. Clutch and brake pressures don’t seem far removed from the same era. Although this new Morgan has stretched the passenger compartment by two inches and lowered the seats, the cockpit is really no place for tall folk or those who stay too long in the cafeteria.

Yet for those who fit, for enthusiasts who know and can live with live axles and leaf springs as part of a suspension system that reads road ripples like Braille, a Morgan delivers a double smugness: It’s your chance to own a museum piece that roars and handles like a replica. Except it’s an original and a guaranteed immortal.

No hood stretches quite like it, almost from nose level to the horizon. The car is balanced, obedient, with that rugged V-8 that roars like thunder in the Cotswolds. And there are indeed some modern, albeit invisible, niceties in 11-inch disc brakes up front (drums on the rear) and a five-speed manual transmission that is tough and does exactly what it is told, if told firmly enough.

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Bill Fink is taking orders for the 1999 Plus 8--which will probably remain unchanged until 2009, although there is the possibility of a V-6 engine from Rover parent BMW once deliveries of the 4.0 V-8 are discontinued. But be prepared to wait at least four months for delivery. Maybe longer.

That should be just enough time to contact the Irvin Airchute Co. in England to order your very own Royal Air Force sheepskin flying jacket.

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Times automotive writer Paul Dean can be reached at paul.dean@latimes.com.