Breaking The Mould

In the third and final part of our series on one-off Morgans in Europe, we take a look at a Luxembourg designed Morgan, the Morgan Grand Sport – a car that nearly became a limited run of Mogs…

- Douglas Hallawell

The third of the one-off Morgans is even older than the Serra Morgan (in Part 2) and dates as far back as November 1952. The automobile industry in Europe was still recovering from the devastating effects of the Second World War when Paul Conrardy, from Luxembourg, decided to have a sportscar designed to his very own requirements. Previously, Conrardy had owned two MGTCs but fancied a more exotic body on an MG rolling chassis. As the son of a coachbuilder, Conrardy’s dream wasn’t, therefore, as far-fetched as one might imagine. In 1949, after the Salon de Paris car show, Conrardy contacted Philippe Charbonneaux, the talented French stylist well known for his work on Delahayes and Delages.

The plan was for Charbonneaux to design a two-seater coupé (to fit an MG chassis) that would be built at Conrardy’s family coach building premises. Unable to obtain an MG chassis, Conrardy turned to Morgan where he discovered (better still!) that a Plus 4 chassis had a lower centre of gravity than in an MG. Without a Morgan agent in Luxembourg, Conrardy had to place his order through the Belgian agent Lucien Riga, in Brussels, for a Vanguard-engined Plus 4 rolling chassis. Strangely, Conrardy ordered it with right-hand controls. The body, of an aluminium alloy (Aluman), was supported by a tubular steel framework, and custom-built parts, like the panoramic rear window in Perspex and the glass windscreen, were handcrafted in Belgium. Subsequently painted in a two-tone ivory and navy blue livery, the Morgan Grand Sport, as named by Conrardy, was finished early in 1953 and weighed in at approximately 850 kilos.