The automotive world’s favorite old tinkering uncle, Morgan, has a new and substantially improved iteration of their Plus Four sports car, the Morgan Supersport, which we told you all about earlier today. The car still manages to keep Morgan’s old-school British charm while making substantial modernizations and updates, but it also reveals some key areas of automotive design that are seemingly completely beyond Morgan’s grasp. I’m talking about cupholders.
Yes, cupholders. Those nearly-ubiquitous cylindrical volumes of nothing built into your car, usually within easy arm’s reach and designed to hold a vessel full of the beverage of your choice, which I’m guess-hoping is piping-hot Yoo-Hoo. Morgan is still fairly new to the concept of cupholders in cars, only releasing their first one back in 2022 on the Morgan Super 3.
Morgan seems to have accepted, perhaps grudgingly, that people in cars may enjoy having something to drink, and need a place to store those drinks, so there is a cupholder option in the new Supersport. It’s not cheap though. Look:
Yep, £120 – about $155 in Freedom Dollars – for a cupholder. Just one. And where is it? Morgan decided the best place to put it would be here:
Do you see it? Lemme point it out:
Yes, that’s where Morgan thought a good place for a cupholder would be. In the very middle front of the passenger’s seat. I know the interior of a Morgan is a fairly compact space, but that still seems like a literal and figurative bit of a reach for a cupholder. There was nowhere on the dash or in the center console for a cupholder? Anywhere?
I mean, aftermarket companies have been selling Morgan cupholders for quite a while now, like these that fit on the door and cost about £110 pounds less than Morgan’s official one:
I guess that’s not good enough for Morgan, who decided that the best way for a driver to get access to a drink would be to have to grope around between their passenger’s legs. Because, let’s be very clear, that’s where the drink holder is holding that drink: in crotch-adjacent real estate:
There are so many weird decisions going on here, I’m not sure where to start. Only one person in the car gets to have a beverage, and if it’s the driver then they have to grab it from between the passenger’s legs. More reason to have a lid on whatever you’re drinking, especially if it’s hot, as thighs are in real danger here.
Is this just Morgan’s way of helping to encourage sexy interactions, as your fingers graze inner thigh when you reach for your 32oz Mountain Dew, eyes locked with one another, telegraphing raw, humid passion as you carom down some windy backroad?
Or is this just Morgan’s way of reminding you that their interior accessory people have yet to meet another human being, but they’re very much looking forward to it?
The location would be good for some sort of in-car urine management system, at least, though in some ways that’s the opposite of a cupholder. Still, if that was the intended purpose, at least it would make some sort of sense. Because, as it stands, this may be the most ridiculous place for a cupholder I’ve ever seen in a production – even limited production – car.
I’ll reach out to Morgan to see if there’s some brilliant reason for this that’s escaping me, but until then, I think I’m just going to enjoy the profound bafflement of it all.
The BMW-Powered $132,000 Morgan Supersport Seems Way Better Than A Restomod
Regulations Made The US Version Of The New Morgan Super 3 Have A Spider Face
The Morgan Plus 4 ‘Spiaggina’ Has A Wacky Roof And Is The Perfect Beach Car For Mr. Toad
Sorry to spoil the fun for you; the cupholder doesn’t matter, the car will not come to the USA anyway.
The Plus Four is coming to the USA, the Plus Six will not.
That is a different car. Maybe the same cupholder solution?
That’s obviously where the navigator is supposed to put the Curta Calculator when they need both hands free.
Is it installed on the other seat when the car is RHD? If not, it’s a driver’s piss pot in its home country.
I think the intended message here is “We have to have two seats for obscure reasons but we really don’t intend for anyone other than the driver to be in this thing.”
Either that or it’s not actually a cupholder and is in fact supposed to be the mounting ring for the 20mm fireworks mortar intended to signal your arrival, which would necessitate a passenger to calculate windage and range.
I think the number of people who drive a Morgan and are drinking Mountain Dew are rather low.
I’m still looking for the touchscreen.
Torch, you’ll just have to ask for a press loaner to test different methods. Given your most frequent passengers are your wife of almost 20 years and your teenage son, I STRONGLY recommend the “ask them to hand it to you” method.
You’d think Morgan would find a way to use the ND Miata’s clip in cupholders.
I’ve actually seen similar placement for people retrofitting cupholders into cars that didn’t come with them and don’t want the door clip on kind. But usually those ones sandwich in between one of the seat rails and the floor. I saw an ad for one intended for S13 240SX/Silvia that I wanted to buy but then forgot who sold it and haven’t been able to find it since then.
Morgan was just using there usual thought and design process. In 1938 where do you keep your hot beverage when your typical customer is son of the Lord and his passengers most of the time is the servant girl he wants to impress with his new Morgan motorcar.
Or Mr. Toad.
It’s better than the S3 I drove where the cup holders were attached to the outside of the car and where an open topped beverage could collect all the road debris cast up by the front wheels.
Given that it’s a Morgan I thought the answer was going to be something to the effect of “built of rich mahogany and embedded in the running board” or “in the boot”. The true answer was puzzling, but not quite “Morgan” enough in my mind.
“You lift up this hidden latch on the rear quarter panel, and inside you’ll find two finely handcrafted rings to keep your beverages secure.”
Flip down the wooden cover on the glove box, embedded wooden cupholder – would’ve been way more Morgan.
It’s simply encouraging some era-appropriate sexual harassment so you can really feel like you’re driving a roadster in the 60s.
“Yeah, the coffee is a bit hot tonight
I can barely see the road over the length of my…bonnet
I reach down between my legs and
Take the lid off”
–Sir David Leigh Roth, Earl of Panama
If this is not the COTD, whoever chooses is wrong.
I don’t see what the big deal is here. Back in the 70’s no cars had cupholders, so if you were a kid in the 80’s driving a car of that vintage, you did what we all did, and crotched it. This is a handy evolution of that, nothing more really. Although if I’m the driver I’d kind of like it on my side too.
Come to think of it, it was well through the 80’s before cupholders really took hold en masse. My ’89 Firebird is cupholder-less, but there was a functional solution supplied by the factory. The driver’s seat rake adjuster is fashioned like a curved hook, just the right size to accommodate everything up to a 32oz plastic fast food cup. On mine, the forward seat track cover went missing years ago, but it exposes a bolt head that centers the concave bottom of a 12oz can rather nicely, so even though there was some slack to the handle, it was never in danger of spilling. Consequently, the drink was always at (left) hand, right by your leg. I always wondered if the design was intentional.
My guess is beer cans and Gen 3 F Bodies go hand in hand
TBH the most socially responsible thing about Smokey and the Bandit is that he DID NOT have a 6 pack of Coors on the seat next to him. How was this an oversight?
I suspect that at some (possibly subconscious) level this reflects the average Brit’s contempt for the American preoccupation with cupholders.
Possibly. I know the Germans went through quite a phase where they seemed like they were sabotaging all hydration efforts, or simply being condescending towards anyone who might need to be in their vehicle for 2+ hours.
I recall some cars I’d driven in Germany having a “cupholder” which wasn’t much more than a flat area near the shifter with two sunken rings about 3mm deep.
I wondered, at the time, how they drank coffee whilst on the road. I was sternly told, by colleagues, that you simply don’t and we’ve coffee at the office once you arrive.
Check out a ’70s American car with a “cupholder” moulded into the glovebox door, two small shallow circles for a Dixie cup at a drive in.
Long road trip ready either way
I assume the passenger is the driver’s cupholder, and the cupholder is for the passenger’s beverage, since the passenger will be busy holding the driver’s cup.
Enjoy the drive, not the beverage.
The Honda Fit had my favorite cup holder solution… right under the driver’s side vent. It was awesome. You could mount your phone there for navigation. Your cup would always stay warm with the heat or cold with the AC. Easy reach too!
I love it since I can put my coffee cup in it when I am getting into the car instead of bending over to put it in the console holder. Brilliant solution to a problem I did not even think I had.
Great place for a nice hot cup of McDonald’s coffee. No issues there.
This reminds me of the middle front seat in my 1994 Toyota Extended Cab pickup.
The seat itself is narrower than a person so the lapbelt wraps around you, and the stickshift is between said passenger’s legs.
Automotive BDSM device?
Heh I thought it was going to turn out to be in the engine bay.
I would have guessed hanging off the side view mirror arm.
Talk about great placement for a passenger piss cup though. This should really be sold as a long-distance trip aid.
Touché