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.
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So this is why it’s auto only! So the driver can just hold their cup.
Alternatively:
Take shoe off. Put shoe on floor. Put drink in shoe.
They could have just gone for the slide out cupholders that VW used to use in the MK4 Jetta. It’s on the dash, you can’t really see it, you push it in, and a little tray slides out and you can fit two drinks in it. It was Brilliant. Of couse being a VW it was overly complicated and broke after a few years, but it was cheap to replace
The first Warped Tour I went to, in the Paleolithic Era, was in Pittsburgh. It was the Vandals’ last stop on the tour. Yoohoo was the big sponsor that year.
They thanked said sponsor by saying ‘Thanks to Yoohoo for looking and tasting like diarrhea’ before breaking into the title song from Live Fast, Diarrhea. Never had much of a taste for Yoohoo after that.
Obviously, I’ve never been in this morganatic, but I have a Miata, and the Morgan solution is better than Mazdas. The Miata attempts to provide two cup holders that are removable, but the only one that is usable for the driver makes being a passenger uncomfortable. The other location for the cupholders are both useless for either passenger or driver. Having a beverage and passenger in a Miata is basically a non-starter. The cupholder in the Miata would be better if it were where it is in the Morgan.
for the dozens of people that buy this car, neither the cup holder location nor the add-on price will be a deal breaker. then there are people like me who saw this article and is surprised that morgan is still making cars with four wheels.
A good in car urine system has a hose that drains to beneath the car so you can spray the traffic behind you. Don’t ask how I know.
I’d route the hose into the exhaust, after the muffler. Steamy urine will stay suspended in the air longer to maximize the anti-tailgater effect. Probably increase the stench too by boiling off the water content.
I’ve drawn all the shades, unplugged the electronics, I’ve got my dog and his tracking chip in a makeshift Faraday cage. The doors are locked and and barricaded, I am peeping out of slits in blinds, careful not to bend them down and give myself away, spiraling out asking myself over and over again, how in the world does Jason Torchinsky knows about my piping hot Yoo-Hoo habit.
I never thought a cupholder would elicit a full wheezy laugh from me, but here we are.
When you live in a place where you’ll rarely go far enough on any one drive to get thirsty, cupholders are probably just an afterthought.
As Mick would say that’s not a cupholder, this is a cupholder.
Insert picture here
But really that doesn’t look capable of holding a medium sized soda let alone the 32oz suggested in the article.
Oh, okay, so it’s about on par with an 80s or 90s Camry. My father had a 94 Camry. Only real complaints he ever had was how awful the cupholders were, and the fact that the moon roof thingy was the only part of the headliner that fell apart in his hands.
Mind you, my father’s basically greased Satan on a good set of wheels, on the cars he drives. He doesn’t even do it intentionally, they all just kind of fall apart around him. Mundane Magic or something, IDK. But good god do I have stories.
Please share!
Maybe someday :3
Hi, an Englishman here.
Anyone who needs to drink more often than they need to urinate is doing it wrong. You drink when you stop.
Preferably a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (which is very much neither the thing you call a biscuit or what we call a cookie).
You have guns and cup holders, we have free healthcare and self-denial.
It takes longer to drive across my state than it does your country, we just naturally spend more time in the car thanks to the lack of effective public transport options.
And we are a country of immensely obese people that can’t stop stuffing our soda holes.
Visiting my in-laws is a 1000 mile round trip, all within the UK.
I worked in Indiana for a while, so I understand how massive and empty parts of the US is, and I’ve driven past absolutely nothing of note for six hours between LA and Phoenix, but even on my tiny island you can drive all day on your way somewhere.
Yup. I don’t get the infatuation. If one must drink in the car, get something that has a cap that can be water tight. Not a dumb fucking stanley all these people are obsessed with.
Wow, yeah that’s such an absurd spot to put it…yup, would be good for pissing in a bottle, pissing in a bottle…
Sending out an SOS?
Ha ha yup, it also fits w/ the recent COTD
The car in the photo is LHD, so beyond the remit of this comment, but UK police can ticket you for “distracted driving” if they think your consumption of a beverage (or comestible) is impairing your car control. Maybe Morgan are looking out for their customers by putting beverages out of reach?
Almost as good as the cigarette lighter of a Triumph TR2, as was demonstrated to me by one owner.
He popped a cigar in his mouth, worked a match from a matchbook in his jacket pocket, reached outside behind him to light it on the rear tire, then brought it back inside the cabin to light his cigar.
Still the most British roadster thing I’ve ever seen, to this day.
The passenger doesn’t need a cup holder, they aren’t driving. So there hands are free to hold their beverage and hand the driver theirs.
Also the driver doesn’t have to have the ugliness that is a cup holder in their line of site all the time.
I guess your passenger can help keep the coffee hot?
Reminds me of high school days before anyone had cupholders.
Keeping it in the crotch was always the girl’s job.
It made reaching for the drink a lot of fun.
Life was simpler and more fun in 1974. YMMV
Perhaps they’re such sporting purists that they think our cupholder “need” is stupid, and this is a big middle finger to anyone dumb enough to spend $145 on a crotch cupholder.
It’s not elitist sporting pretension, it’s a cultural difference. You drink when you stop.
And at their production volumes a locally manufactured bespoke design with the associated overhead probable does cost them a significant proportion of that price. Not least because it’s so functionally bad that the take up rate will be tiny.
They should have put it outside in the front fender. How cool would that be?
With British weather? Very cool.
It’s a bonus feature!
Knowing that their customer base is probably geriatric – it’s a feature, not a bug.
That will be kicked in the first time a passenger enters causing damage to one or both parties. Since they went automatic-only, they’re wasting space with that completely incongruous BMW auto shifter that could be used for a phone and cupholder.
Time to corner the crazy straw aftermarket
Based on my experience with Morgan drivers (ok, a Morgan driver) is that they keep their drinks in flasks in the pocket of their tweed coat or leather riding jacket, so there’s really no need for cupholders.