The Morgan Aero 8 is a sports car built by Morgan Motor Company at its factory in Malvern Link, England from 2000 until 2018.
The Aero 8 shape evolved in the traditional Morgan way of form following function and the main players were Chris Lawrence, Charles Morgan and other members of the Morgan Engineering Team, and Norman Kent of Survirn Engineering Ltd – especially for the tooling of the Aero wings.
The Aero 8 is notable because it is the first new Morgan design since 1964's. It was touted as Morgan's first supercar and undertook a comprehensive development programme including endurance testing at BMW's huge proving grounds L'Autodrome de Miramas. It does not use anti-roll bars, an oddity in a modern sporting car. It is also the first Morgan vehicle with an aluminium chassis and frame as opposed to traditional Morgan vehicles ("trads") that have an aluminium skinned wooden body tub on a steel chassis.
The engine first powering the Aero 8 was a 4.4 L BMW M62 V8 mated to a 6-speed Getrag transmission. In 2007, the Series 4 Aero 8 was released which had an upgraded 4.8 L BMW N62 V8 with an optional ZF automatic transmission.
The newest Aero 8 (series V), presented in March 2015, puts out 367 hp at 6100 rpm with the company suggesting a top speed of over 270 km/h. Due to the Aero 8's light weight it can do 100 km/h in 4.5 seconds.
All Aero 8s are assembled at Morgan's Malvern Link factory, where they are able to produce up to 14 cars a week (Aeros and trads).
It has been criticised for its "crosseyed" look which originally was justified by the manufacturers as conferring aerodynamic benefits.
In response, Morgan changed the design from 2005 (Series 3 and all subsequent Aero iterations), using Mini rather than VW New Beetle headlights.
During its customer production lifetime (2002–2009), the Aero was configured in five official versions, (I, II, III, IV, the Aero America and V) with mild variations in styling, engines, transmissions, braking and suspension. The company cancelled the model in 2009 but relaunched it in 2015 for 2016 deliveries. The year of highest production for any Aero variation was 2002.
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