Driving a Morgan to Le Mans was the true gentleman racer experience

If you are going to go on a road trip to Le Mans, you may as well throw everything at it and do it properly. So when I decided that I had to attend the Le Mans Classic for the first time, I decided to do it in a way that would be reminiscent of the racers that took to the Circuit de la Sarthe from the quaint garages and factories of the British Isles over half a century ago.

There are a few brands whose cars will have been driven by gentleman racers down to the south coast of Britain, crossed the Channel and then simply given a clean to prepare for 24 hours of hard racing. I therefore decided to opt for a badge that started racing at Le Mans 80 years ago now, and one that has had a special place in the hearts of the majority of motoring fans ever since.

Of course, I took a Morgan 4/4.

Side-exit exhausts always win in my book

Side-exit exhausts always win in my book

It's a design that has existed for decades, but there's a reason for that – every single person we drove past that picked up on the Morgan's curves would respond with a beaming smile and a wave, both of which I'd respond to with a peep of the retro horn and a blipped downshift.

Driving the 4/4 from Morgan's Malvern factory was majorly special anyway, but knowing that I was heading to a cradle of motorsport with an illustrious history of endurance racing behind it made it seem like I was inserted into the lifestyle of the heroic gentleman racers from the heyday of motorsport in the '50s and '60s.

View gallery image

That was a time when windscreens were cut, tops of doors were slung low and sumptuous leather interiors were the norm.

The Morgan was swathed in tan leather, you can sling your arm over the door while chuntering along and the wind is more than happy to destroy your hair or spit your freshly bought cap down the motorway, meaning the 4/4 has everything you could possibly want to teleport yourself back to motoring's glory days.

Gentleman racers should be horrendously sweaty, right?

Gentleman racers should be horrendously sweaty, right?

Once we departed the ferry, the farmland of northern France awaited for a blast down to the historic town of Le Mans.

And considering we chose the longest expanse of the Channel to cross, we hammer down the French roads while racing the sun as it turned the sky into a glowing pool of amber, slowly morphing into a Normandy night sky.

Did France have motorways in the 1950s?

Did France have motorways in the 1950s?

The hotel was a simple but effective affair and we're joined by fellow enthusiasts, bringing such classics as MGAs, Astons and Jags down through the French countryside, leaving them to tick as they cooled in the hotel car park.

It was my first time at Le Mans and having become absolutely obsessed with Group C racers in the last couple of years, I was very much looking forward to wandering through the paddocks as well as seeing my true hero cars racing flat-out around the circuit.

We're joined by a fellow Mog, the V8 though. Feels like it is cheating

We're joined by a fellow Mog, the V8 though. Feels like it is cheating

Once within the confines of the massive Le Mans circuit, the air was filled with a mixture of screaming V10s, thunderous V8s and rasping in-line fours. The smell of hot, screeching rubber floated into the stands, our eyes stinging from the sheer amount of fuel vapour and exhaust gases circulating around the paddocks and Armco barriers.

Yes, yes and more yes

Yes, yes and more yes

The Le Mans Classic was simply full of every sportscar you could possibly hope to see. Jag D-Types, Healey 3000s, Rileys, Talbots, 250 GTOs, countless Porsche 911s and even a couple of Morgans were driving to the ragged edge down the Mulsanne Straight.

Paying my respects to the deities of endurance racing

Paying my respects to the deities of endurance racing

And knowing that at the end of it all, I'd be slipping back into a car that is a modern take on a time when motor racing was a place for young, trigger happy fighter pilots to get the adrenaline shot that they so craved after the war made me feel that I'd chosen the perfect vehicle to explore the full Le Mans experience.

View gallery image

With the world about to plunge into full autonomy and the electric motor firmly nudging petrol power into the dark ages, what a relief it was to clamber into a car as visceral and engaging as the little Moggy.

It may be underpowered and its construction is genuinely from the 1950s, but that's exactly what you're buying into. There's no point in yearning for a piece of yesteryear and then wisping down to Le Mans in an automatic SUV.

If you have the urge to feel the heat pouring out of bonnets louvres and into the cabin, if you want to hear the barking acoustics of a plucky British sportscar being wrung to its limiter, if you want to feel like an ex-Spitfire pilot searching for his next thrill on the racetrack, then trust me, the Morgan 4/4 is the outlet that you've been looking for.

View gallery image