Morgan is no longer Morgan-owned

Morgan Motor, one of the world’s last family-owned boutique car companies, has been sold.

The 110-year-old English car company was founded in the days of King Edward, but it is about to swap bangers-and-mash for lasagna.

Italian investment firm Investindustrial, the umbrella company of brothers Carlo and Andrea Bonomi, has announced it will buy a majority stake in Morgan Motor in a deal set to be finalised in April.

No financial terms have been announced, but the Morgan family will retain a minority stake in Worcestershire firm, which is most famous for its long waiting lists, three wheelers and the use of wood, rather than metal, in its chassis frames.

It just launched its Plus 6 at the Geneva motor show, where it swapped out the Plus 8’s BMW-sourced V8 motor for a BMW Z4/Toyota Supra straight-six 3.0-litre turbo motor, code named B58, which produces 250kW of power.

Investindustrial is no newcomer to the automotive industry, having bought Ducati in 2005 and sold it to Audi in 2012. It used £150 million of the proceeds from the Ducati sale to buy a 37.5 per cent share of Aston Martin later in the same year.

With almost 180 people on staff, Morgan had a turnover of £33.8 million last year, and its annual sales top out between 700 and 850 cars (or “Moggies” to its fans) a year.

“The past two years have been the most successful in our company’s 110-year history,” Morgan Chairman Dominic Riley said in a statement.

“However, to really fulfill Morgan’s full potential and secure our long-term future, both the family and management team, felt it was essential to bring in a strategic partner,” he said.

All of Morgan’s cars are hand-built – and always have been – which partially explains why their peak waiting period has been up to 10 years. While ash wood is no longer used in the chassis, it is still used almost symbolically as a substructure to attach the body shell to the metal chassis.

Morgan today makes its three-wheeler, the EV3 electric three-wheeler, the Aero Plus 8, the Roadster 3.7 and the V8-engined Aero 8.

Its direct family management effectively ended in 2013, when Charles Morgan was removed as both managing director and a board member.