Morgan Aero 8 Series 2 - vs - Aston Martin V8 Vantage 4.3
Discussion
This is a face off between two very different Brit sports cars, both with a V8, 2 seats and a winged badge, both of which I am very lucky to own.
This:
Takes on this:
(P.S. yes, that is someone else's extraordinarily cool, mint and 70's brown Jensen Interceptor in the background).
Design
Aston - beautiful design – but familiarity and newer, glitzier Astons has made the shape a bit ordinary, and flashier newcomers like the F-type have more road presence these days. I still think this is Aston’s best modern shape, possibly barring the original Vanquish. Interior is much nicer than the Morgan, with cohesive design, better materials and a quality feel.
Morgan - should be cross-eyed ugly and a pastiche of the past, and looks exactly that in photos. Yet in the metal is an extraordinarily beguiling thing with enormous road presence and ridiculously cool lines and stance. Interior is a bit slapdash with plenty of bare aluminium, exposed screwheads and leather that isn’t great quality(although later variants are much better) .
Winner – Aston: narrowly. Objectively, Aston is prettier, and much nicer inside. Subjectively, I personally prefer the Morgan’s exterior for its presence and sheer bonkers attitude.
Build Quality
Aston – not a rattle, not a squeak, feels new at 7 years old and 32,000 miles.
Morgan – rattles, shimmies, squeaks, bits of trim coming loose at 10 years and 60,000 miles. Things have never been particularly well bolted together – every service requires tightening of screws, clamps and fixings.
Winner – Aston. It feels carved from a single lump of metal, and comprehensively shames the Aero, which by comparison feels like a kit car.
Ride and refinement
You’re joking, right?? Although, interestingly, the Aero’s low speed ride is far nicer than the Aston’s. But everywhere else, the Morgan is embarrassed. The Aston is solid, smooth, comfortable. The Morgan is cramped, rattly, noisy. The hood leaks, the heating/cooling needs constant fiddling to get it right, and you can’t hear yourself think over wind, engine and tyre noise at virtually any speed.
Winner – Aston, again by a country mile.
Straight line speed
Aston – a little breathless at low revs, but over 4000rpm a real mover, with far better top end than the Morgan. People who say these cars are slow mistake that initial underwhelmingness for sloth. Driven in the power band, the V8V remains a quick car.
Morgan – the “Aero” 8 is nothing of the sort: top end blunted by brick-like aerodynamics. But low down shove is monumental due to torque being available from far lower than the Aston, and lighter weight. When hooked up and pointed in a straight line, the Aero 8 is an absolute animal, belying the mere 367bhp my particular one showed at the rolling road.
Winner – Morgan, emphatically, both for the way it feels (it feels savagely fast) and the way it is (actually much faster than the V8V until well into licence losing territory).
Noise
Aston – lovely, gentle V8 burble at idle, through metallic snarl at mid range, to harsh racer howl at higher reaches: truly one of the best sounding V8s out there.
Morgan – but somehow, an ordinary BMW V8 shouting through under-sill sidepipe exhausts is unbelievably good. Proper, old school burble at idle, through a WW2 fighter plane roar in mid range to a proper bellowing at top end, with some odd hints of Harley Davidson throughout the range.
Winner - draw. Very, very different. Aston is race-like screamer, but the Morgan counters by being an old school, bassy muscle car.
Transmission
Aston – horrid, baulky manual gearchange. Lack of low down urge coupled to this box means town driving is a pain, requiring revs and clutch balancing.
Morgan – snicky, short throw gearchange is a joy. And all you do to move off in traffic is lift your foot off the clutch, and the car ambles forwards on its torque.
Winner – Morgan. How could Aston get the gearchange so wrong?
Steering and handling
Aston – helm is initially heavy, but has lots of feel and becomes a joy as you speed up. The car feels heavy and leaden at low speeds, but honestly comes alive as you push it, finding more feel, more confidence in the front end, and more faithful predictability as you speed it up. I genuinely believe that this car is a handling great for the way that it rewards commitment and becomes such a precision tool as you ask more of it. First impressions are that it is heavy and inert., Give it its head though, and it darts and dances on its tiptoes like a sports car should. This is a car that rewards maximum attack, with lots of adjustability and an innately forgiving nature.
Aero – very light steering gives initial feeling of lightness and agility, but there is very little sense of what’s going on at the front wheels. As you go faster, it becomes genuinely scary. The faster you go in this car, the more it hops around, requires constant correction, and you never really know how much you can lean on it. The answer is: not a lot. In the dry it will hunt camber, skip around on imperfections and requires a degree of competence and adjustment that is very tiring. In wet or damp conditions, it is utterly, utterly terrifying. Big power, little feel, light weight. Hustling this thing on public roads requires big space, big skill, and very big balls. Never to be taken beyond six tenths unless you really, really know what you’re doing and can make very fast corrections – which with the slow geared, numb helm is quite the task. Slow in, moderately fast out, catch everything else on the straights.
Winner Aston, by a long, long way.
Brakes
Aston – progressive, nice feel, but the car feels under-braked for its weight. I doubt that these stoppers would be up to much on track.
Morgan – the Series 1 Aero had terrible brakes, wooden, prone to lock up and in my view dangerous. This, the Series 2, is a revelation. Big AP Racing setup with relatively light weight means that the brakes are solid, progressive and inspire a lot of confidence. Issues come from the twitchy chassis. Trail braking at high speed? Make sure you have good insurance and have written a will.
Winner – Aero, surprisingly
Running costs
Aston – big service costs and big road tax, but it seems that a) fixed price servicing and b) build quality should lead to acceptable annual costs. Insurance surprisingly OK (37 years old, no points, no claims, garage parking in London). 16-19 mpg.
Morgan – service and labour costs are reasonable: but build quality means that every year, something costing a thousand pounds extra needs doing: inevitably around electronics or peripheral systems. Drivetrain and chassis have never been an issue on either of the two that I have owned, but if you bend that beautiful aluminium bodywork, be very, very afraid. I have had two of these cars – and they cost as much to keep on the road as something like a Ferrari 360/430. Insurance about the same as the Aston, but cheaper tax. Classic insurance next year will slash insurance costs. 17-22 mpg.
Winner – Aston. Morgan too good at delivering big, unexpected bills.
Practicality
Aston – small boot and poor economy, but very useable as a daily driver
Morgan – similar boot size to Aston. Apart from that, you’d need to have your head examined to use it as a daily. It’s why I bought the Aston – so Lady F actually has something useable to drive on the occasional winter commuting trip she does. Or that’s what I told her anyway – she didn’t believe me.
Winner – Aston, by a hilarious degree.
So: Aston 6, Morgan 3. A pretty convincing win for the AMV8.
But do you know what? I want the Aero in my garage in 40 years’ time. If I sold the Aston tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss it. And this is what is so personal about such things. The Aston Martin is in almost every meaningful way a better car; more relevant, better resolved, better real world performance, higher quality, better design and engineering.
But the Aero 8 is just glorious – I genuinely think that to get a more special feel from a car, you would need something Italian with a bull or horse on the front. It feels genuinely exotic – intimidating, rare and challenging, and it is a proper piece of street theatre.
This was not a foregone conclusion – I bought the Aston, thinking that living with it would show up the Aero for the anachronism that it was, and convince me to move on, as I periodically think I will do. Instead, it made me realise that whilst Aston built a great sports car and a potential world beater at the time, Morgan, seemingly by accident, built something that absolutely bleeds character*. The Aston will be sold before the Aero – a very unexpected result for me. The Vantage impresses you with its breadth of abilities, and you stare at it every time you park up and listen to it cooling down, admiring it for its abilities. It is a lifestyle choice, to go with the other nice, beautifully designed objects that you own. No major flaws, and great at everything whilst being charismatic and consistent. Girls love it.
But the Morgan is like an addiction. You hate it most of the time, your friends don’t understand it, and it bankrupts you. Yet when you get that hit, everything else becomes utterly irrelevant. You want it gone, but can’t bear the thought of being without it. While the highs are breathtakingly wild, the lows are not just bad, they're properly dangerous. Chicks can’t stand it.
Driving an Aero 8 just makes you laugh out loud. Until it rains. At which point the experience immediately becomes awful, and possibly life-ending.
*the kind of character that will beat you senseless in a back alley and steal your stuff, but character nonetheless.
This:
Takes on this:
(P.S. yes, that is someone else's extraordinarily cool, mint and 70's brown Jensen Interceptor in the background).
Design
Aston - beautiful design – but familiarity and newer, glitzier Astons has made the shape a bit ordinary, and flashier newcomers like the F-type have more road presence these days. I still think this is Aston’s best modern shape, possibly barring the original Vanquish. Interior is much nicer than the Morgan, with cohesive design, better materials and a quality feel.
Morgan - should be cross-eyed ugly and a pastiche of the past, and looks exactly that in photos. Yet in the metal is an extraordinarily beguiling thing with enormous road presence and ridiculously cool lines and stance. Interior is a bit slapdash with plenty of bare aluminium, exposed screwheads and leather that isn’t great quality(although later variants are much better) .
Winner – Aston: narrowly. Objectively, Aston is prettier, and much nicer inside. Subjectively, I personally prefer the Morgan’s exterior for its presence and sheer bonkers attitude.
Build Quality
Aston – not a rattle, not a squeak, feels new at 7 years old and 32,000 miles.
Morgan – rattles, shimmies, squeaks, bits of trim coming loose at 10 years and 60,000 miles. Things have never been particularly well bolted together – every service requires tightening of screws, clamps and fixings.
Winner – Aston. It feels carved from a single lump of metal, and comprehensively shames the Aero, which by comparison feels like a kit car.
Ride and refinement
You’re joking, right?? Although, interestingly, the Aero’s low speed ride is far nicer than the Aston’s. But everywhere else, the Morgan is embarrassed. The Aston is solid, smooth, comfortable. The Morgan is cramped, rattly, noisy. The hood leaks, the heating/cooling needs constant fiddling to get it right, and you can’t hear yourself think over wind, engine and tyre noise at virtually any speed.
Winner – Aston, again by a country mile.
Straight line speed
Aston – a little breathless at low revs, but over 4000rpm a real mover, with far better top end than the Morgan. People who say these cars are slow mistake that initial underwhelmingness for sloth. Driven in the power band, the V8V remains a quick car.
Morgan – the “Aero” 8 is nothing of the sort: top end blunted by brick-like aerodynamics. But low down shove is monumental due to torque being available from far lower than the Aston, and lighter weight. When hooked up and pointed in a straight line, the Aero 8 is an absolute animal, belying the mere 367bhp my particular one showed at the rolling road.
Winner – Morgan, emphatically, both for the way it feels (it feels savagely fast) and the way it is (actually much faster than the V8V until well into licence losing territory).
Noise
Aston – lovely, gentle V8 burble at idle, through metallic snarl at mid range, to harsh racer howl at higher reaches: truly one of the best sounding V8s out there.
Morgan – but somehow, an ordinary BMW V8 shouting through under-sill sidepipe exhausts is unbelievably good. Proper, old school burble at idle, through a WW2 fighter plane roar in mid range to a proper bellowing at top end, with some odd hints of Harley Davidson throughout the range.
Winner - draw. Very, very different. Aston is race-like screamer, but the Morgan counters by being an old school, bassy muscle car.
Transmission
Aston – horrid, baulky manual gearchange. Lack of low down urge coupled to this box means town driving is a pain, requiring revs and clutch balancing.
Morgan – snicky, short throw gearchange is a joy. And all you do to move off in traffic is lift your foot off the clutch, and the car ambles forwards on its torque.
Winner – Morgan. How could Aston get the gearchange so wrong?
Steering and handling
Aston – helm is initially heavy, but has lots of feel and becomes a joy as you speed up. The car feels heavy and leaden at low speeds, but honestly comes alive as you push it, finding more feel, more confidence in the front end, and more faithful predictability as you speed it up. I genuinely believe that this car is a handling great for the way that it rewards commitment and becomes such a precision tool as you ask more of it. First impressions are that it is heavy and inert., Give it its head though, and it darts and dances on its tiptoes like a sports car should. This is a car that rewards maximum attack, with lots of adjustability and an innately forgiving nature.
Aero – very light steering gives initial feeling of lightness and agility, but there is very little sense of what’s going on at the front wheels. As you go faster, it becomes genuinely scary. The faster you go in this car, the more it hops around, requires constant correction, and you never really know how much you can lean on it. The answer is: not a lot. In the dry it will hunt camber, skip around on imperfections and requires a degree of competence and adjustment that is very tiring. In wet or damp conditions, it is utterly, utterly terrifying. Big power, little feel, light weight. Hustling this thing on public roads requires big space, big skill, and very big balls. Never to be taken beyond six tenths unless you really, really know what you’re doing and can make very fast corrections – which with the slow geared, numb helm is quite the task. Slow in, moderately fast out, catch everything else on the straights.
Winner Aston, by a long, long way.
Brakes
Aston – progressive, nice feel, but the car feels under-braked for its weight. I doubt that these stoppers would be up to much on track.
Morgan – the Series 1 Aero had terrible brakes, wooden, prone to lock up and in my view dangerous. This, the Series 2, is a revelation. Big AP Racing setup with relatively light weight means that the brakes are solid, progressive and inspire a lot of confidence. Issues come from the twitchy chassis. Trail braking at high speed? Make sure you have good insurance and have written a will.
Winner – Aero, surprisingly
Running costs
Aston – big service costs and big road tax, but it seems that a) fixed price servicing and b) build quality should lead to acceptable annual costs. Insurance surprisingly OK (37 years old, no points, no claims, garage parking in London). 16-19 mpg.
Morgan – service and labour costs are reasonable: but build quality means that every year, something costing a thousand pounds extra needs doing: inevitably around electronics or peripheral systems. Drivetrain and chassis have never been an issue on either of the two that I have owned, but if you bend that beautiful aluminium bodywork, be very, very afraid. I have had two of these cars – and they cost as much to keep on the road as something like a Ferrari 360/430. Insurance about the same as the Aston, but cheaper tax. Classic insurance next year will slash insurance costs. 17-22 mpg.
Winner – Aston. Morgan too good at delivering big, unexpected bills.
Practicality
Aston – small boot and poor economy, but very useable as a daily driver
Morgan – similar boot size to Aston. Apart from that, you’d need to have your head examined to use it as a daily. It’s why I bought the Aston – so Lady F actually has something useable to drive on the occasional winter commuting trip she does. Or that’s what I told her anyway – she didn’t believe me.
Winner – Aston, by a hilarious degree.
So: Aston 6, Morgan 3. A pretty convincing win for the AMV8.
But do you know what? I want the Aero in my garage in 40 years’ time. If I sold the Aston tomorrow, I wouldn’t miss it. And this is what is so personal about such things. The Aston Martin is in almost every meaningful way a better car; more relevant, better resolved, better real world performance, higher quality, better design and engineering.
But the Aero 8 is just glorious – I genuinely think that to get a more special feel from a car, you would need something Italian with a bull or horse on the front. It feels genuinely exotic – intimidating, rare and challenging, and it is a proper piece of street theatre.
This was not a foregone conclusion – I bought the Aston, thinking that living with it would show up the Aero for the anachronism that it was, and convince me to move on, as I periodically think I will do. Instead, it made me realise that whilst Aston built a great sports car and a potential world beater at the time, Morgan, seemingly by accident, built something that absolutely bleeds character*. The Aston will be sold before the Aero – a very unexpected result for me. The Vantage impresses you with its breadth of abilities, and you stare at it every time you park up and listen to it cooling down, admiring it for its abilities. It is a lifestyle choice, to go with the other nice, beautifully designed objects that you own. No major flaws, and great at everything whilst being charismatic and consistent. Girls love it.
But the Morgan is like an addiction. You hate it most of the time, your friends don’t understand it, and it bankrupts you. Yet when you get that hit, everything else becomes utterly irrelevant. You want it gone, but can’t bear the thought of being without it. While the highs are breathtakingly wild, the lows are not just bad, they're properly dangerous. Chicks can’t stand it.
Driving an Aero 8 just makes you laugh out loud. Until it rains. At which point the experience immediately becomes awful, and possibly life-ending.
*the kind of character that will beat you senseless in a back alley and steal your stuff, but character nonetheless.
Edited by Harry Flashman on Tuesday 2nd June 16:19
Several aspects of the Morgan sound quite similar to my mother’s (was my late father’s) ’97 “classic” one...and the ownership experience sounds rather similar to running an old 911.
I feel similarly about my 911...but can’t help but wonder if it’s time to test-drive an Aero 8...*
I feel similarly about my 911...but can’t help but wonder if it’s time to test-drive an Aero 8...*
- This isn't helped by not having driven it for 10 days and, perhaps, a 9 year ownership itch .
(this comment is of course assuming your 'name' refers to the illustrious H.P Flashman and is not your real name!)Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff