Some 30 years ago, I was at Snetterton one Sunday afternoon with my Midget. In the same race was a lady with a red H-plate Morgan Plus Eight. My Midget came on a ramshackle trailer behind anything I could find with a hook. She drove her Morgan to the race with her husband, enjoyed a day’s sport, then drove it back again. A few weekends ago, I was there again, ready to remedy an omission in my log book and race a Morgan for the first time. And you know what, Mary was there too. Same car, same husband, same intentions, and as far as I know she hasn’t put the roof on since I last saw her.

Having been, as it were, invited to the Morgan fold after so many years, it was surprising for me to discover that while people have raced Morgans for ever, the Morgan factory has never really made a turn-key racer. Surely, given the bonus of a light car and already stiff suspension, a bit of judicious fiddling by people who understood the peculiarities of the layout – like the factory – would have made them faster still with relatively little effort. Those people who wanted to race a Morgan would be almost certain to buy one and the factory could charge a bit extra for the privilege.

Well, some 100 years or so down the road, that is what Morgan has finally done and the car I was to drive is the prototype of the Morgan Roadster Lightweight, the factory’s first off-the-shelf competition car. An offer to compete is always welcome but this one would also provide the perfect opportunity to see what difference might be wrought when vintage technology is fettled by someone who knows how, something that has been a bit of a theme for me of late with cars like the ERA and Maserati we featured a couple of months ago.

The opportunity had come via Morgan dealer and seasoned racer Richard Thorne, whose team prepares the Aero 8 that runs in British GTs. Thorne was looking to create sales opportunities and he believes that although the Morgan race championship is relatively healthy, you can’t assume that will always be the case. When Mary stops racing her Plus Eight for whatever reason, there needs to be someone else to fill the space on the grid. The latest Ford-engined Morgan seemed like a suitable case for treatment and Thorne and his team set about creating a specification which the factory might adopt and sell as a ready-to-go item.

The development involved softer rear springs (still can’t get my head around that fact, but it was also true of the Sebring Sprite which we tested in Octane 23, so maybe it has to do with the half-elliptic leaves), plus the appropriate shock absorber length and rate. There were changes to the springs on the front sliding pillars too – little coils with a diameter not much bigger than your thumb, but which must still be correctly rated – and to the front dampers.

Disc front and drum rear brakes are all equipped with tougher friction material, there’s a limited-slip differential on a different ratio and a set of Yokohama track-day tyres for the aluminium wheels, plus competition seats and belts, fire extinguisher and the normal safety stuff. The car is minus some of the interior trim and the bumpers to reduce weight and the engine remains essentially standard but still puts out a healthy 250 horsepower or thereabouts, driving through a manual five-speed gearbox from the same source.

In theory, you can collect your Lightweight Roadster from a Morgan dealer near you, set off to a race track and compete, then, with luck, drive home again. Thorne’s hunch would appear to be correct, because there were six of them at Snetterton, four of which had owner-drivers completely new to racing. Five new cars and drivers for a one-marque championship seemed pretty good going to me.

So, how was it for yours truly? Well, I knew that a Morgan would be different, and it was. You sit very close to the screen with your legs stretched out below the scuttle, the wheel up high and your arms sharply bent, all of which at first feels strange but is actually quite intimate. You do immediately feel part of the car. The steering then has an extremely odd feel. It seems low-geared because you wind the wheel a lot when manouevring round the paddock, where you notice that the weighting is not consistent. It grows heavier, then light, then heavier again as you turn the wheel.

Then, once on the circuit, the response is suddenly very positive. The car moves quite sharply in response to a much smaller wheel movement than you were expecting, given its low-speed behaviour. At the same time there is the acccompanying Morgan Shuffle. The Roadster moves about over the bumps in a kind of chop, feeling as if the chassis, body and wheels are all moving at different rates – even if they aren’t – then, when you get to the turns, the shuffle becomes a jig where one rear corner seems to squat and rise in rapid succession. You feel it through the body and your head bobs in sympathy, but your arms and hands get it as well because at the same time the movement tugs at the wheel. It’s all very different and very busy, but it’s strangely addictive because the car is never still in any direction and that makes it very involving. You can almost judge your cornering effort by how energetic is the jig, a duet which becomes more intimate still because of the seating position. And how often your elbow smacks the naked doorlock. The little guard which might soothe the impact is apparently another development part...

The jigging though, soon became a little too frantic for my liking, pogoing the car into quite nasty snappy mid-corner oversteer which was hard to catch because the tug at the wheel and the hop, together with the generally flexible feel, all got really out of kilter and it was hard to know which one to chase – especially when at least half the wheels were off the ground. Thorne was apologetic but straightforward: there had only been enough sets of the softer springs to equip the customers who were paying and, anyway, it was the best part of a day’s job to remove the fuel tank and axle and change them.

Our weekend’s ever-willing engineers Simon Hall and Neil Cullen thought there might be some mileage in changing the rear dampers, but to no avail, and then the steering took on a mind of its own. It would go heavy then light at the left-hander at the end of the straight, and that is extremely spooky. You can’t help but react to what feels like a patch of oil...

Fortunately Ray Higgs, one of the virgin racers, offered me a few laps in his customer car, which had all the correct bits and which turned out to be a delight to drive. Gentle push from the front which lets you keep your foot in it, consistent steering effort and barely a jig to be felt. It was still intimate though, just not quite so busy, or so scary over the bumps, so obviously the spring rates and the chassis flex and the steering’s peculiarities were all in harmony.

This was all on the Friday, with qualifying on the Sunday morning, for which rain was forecast. Just what we needed for a snappy car. That reappeared with the same rear springs but an overhauled front end, complete with a set of little ball bearings which stop the bits of sliding pillar eating each other and upsetting the steering at the end of the straight. Qualifying then became a contest to see if I could find a clear bit of track and avoid the pogo for all of Snetterton’s eight corners but, just as I thought I’d discovered the former, the bloody thing ran out of petrol... I confess I did that thing that Raikkonen has perfected, which is walking away from the car without a glance and heading straight for the motorhome without speaking to anyone. A few minutes and a cup of tea restored my composure.

Then Neil had a thought. He and Simon would change the rear dampers for a set of completely standard road items. This made the rear end as floppy as it had been stiff – if you see what I mean – and I concluded that it might still pogo but for different reasons. Happy to relate, it didn’t, and come Sunday afternoon, I got a good start from the midfield to find a Morgan that was much, much calmer and much more like Higgs’ car. That allowed a rather more benign character to peep through while I managed to pick my way through the field. The shuffle and the jig were still there, albeit in lesser proportions, but so was the intimate, direct feel and there was more grip and more traction than you would expect from something with such a traditional look. Yes, it was good fun and a good place to start a scrap on a Sunday.

By the time the chequer fluttered, I had made my way to eighth overall and first in class, behind some of the more highly modified V8 cars but ahead of all the standard Plus Eights – a fact that pleased Richard and his men no end – especially as there was no doubt that the car could go quicker still with the rest of the bits and a bit of fiddling.

There’s no doubt you could have a lot of fun with something like this, on both road and track, and you could meet some nice people along the way; the Morgan faithful made me very welcome and there seemed to be a regular social side of the sort I remember from all those years ago. The cars that bring these people together may not be for everybody, but for me it was a bit like racing a historic car, with all the slip and slide and shake rattle and roll that takes you back in time but with the knowledge that the engine and running gear are all right up to date and have the reliability and minimal maintenance needs that go with that.

As for the rest, well, I am now more convinced than ever that where cars are concerned there’s just no such thing as simple technology.

Visit www.morgan-motorsport.uk.com to find out more about the Roadster Cup race series.