Morgan AeroMax: the Malvern coupé that began as a one-off
The Morgan AeroMax is a two-seat British coupé built by the Morgan Motor Company at Malvern Link from 2008: a fixed-roof version of the Aero 8 with an ash-framed aluminium body and a 4.8-litre BMW V8. It began as a one-off for the Swiss banker Prince Eric Sturdza, shown at the 2005 Geneva motor show, and the reaction there led Morgan to build a limited run of 100 at £110,000 each.
It rarely comes up for sale: the 100 were spoken for before the first customer car was delivered, owners have included Richard Hammond and Rowan Atkinson, and auction prices since 2011 have run from £92,000 to $209,000.
How the AeroMax began
The AeroMax began as a commission from one customer. Morgan’s announcement of March 2005 said Prince Eric I. Sturdza, president of Banque Baring Brothers Suisse, wanted “a comfortable long distance Touring Coupe”, and that he asked for three things in particular: “gullwing” boot openings, a hardwood and pleated leather interior, and a large flat load area behind the seats. evo later described him as the Swiss banker who had funded most of Morgan’s GT3 racing.
The base was the Aero 8, the bonded aluminium roadster with a BMW V8 that Morgan had launched in 2000. Charles Morgan, then running the family firm, said in the same release: “It took just 4 months from a sketch to being able to test drive a real finished car.”
Who designed the Morgan AeroMax?
Matthew Humphries designed it while he was still a student. The 2005 release says he made a quarter-scale clay model at the University of Coventry’s automotive design school, shaped to fit the Aero 8 chassis and to reuse its exterior parts that were not to be specially tooled; the model was digitised in CATIA, and the file was used to make simple jigs for the ash frame, the alloy panels and the toughened glass. evo’s 2013 A–Z of supercars gives his age at the time as 21.
Morgan kept him. When PistonHeads visited Malvern in April 2009 he was the company’s chief designer and was finishing the Aero Supersports show car, and he went on to design the 2011 Morgan 3 Wheeler, which the Royal College of Art’s research repository lists among his work.
From one car at Geneva to a run of 100
The one-off was shown at the Geneva motor show in March 2005, and the response persuaded Morgan, with Sturdza’s agreement, to put it into production. Morgan’s own production release of 2008 dates the debut to the 2006 show; the March 2005 announcement and the contemporary reports put it in 2005. By the time CAR magazine drove the prototype in 2006, Morgan had settled on 100 cars, due in early 2008, and said it had already taken deposits on 30.
The 2008 production release, reprinted by supercars.net, said all 100 “were sold within just a few weeks of its announcement”, and that two years of production development and “a number of minor improvements” came before the first customer car was delivered. Cars were built from 2008; evo gives the production years as 2008–10, and the last new cars were first registered in the UK in 2010.
Why is it called the AeroMax?
The car is named after Charles Morgan’s son. Asked by Car and Driver in January 2011 whether naming cars after his children was a perk of the job, he said: “Ha! I suppose so. The AeroMax was named after my son Max, and my daughter’s called Eva, which just seemed perfect.” Eva was the EvaGT, the four-seat coupé he was planning at the time.
Design and construction
The AeroMax is an Aero 8 chassis with a new body and a roof. Under it is the Aero 8’s bonded aluminium monocoque; CAR noted that Morgan hung the suspension on ball joints in place of rubber bushes, which let it use quite soft springs.
Ash frame and Superform aluminium body
The body is aluminium over a frame of ash, as on Morgan’s traditional models. The 2005 release says the ash frame is laminated for strength, and that each of the three backbones of the frame shows nine laminates of wood from inside the car. On the one-off the panels were hand-formed; for production every body panel was superformed, heated aluminium blown against a mould by air pressure at about 500°C. The 2008 release called this “a world first”, and PistonHeads wrote in 2009 that the AeroMax was the first car to have a body made entirely of Superform parts.
Borrowed parts
Several parts come from other makers. The tail lamps are from the Lancia Thesis saloon, the steering wheel (with its airbag) came from Aston Martin, and the engine is BMW’s and the gearboxes ZF’s. The front end, which CAR found “slightly less cross-eyed than the original Aero 8”, went down so well at Geneva that Morgan adopted it for the Aero 8 itself.
Rear windows and luggage
There is no conventional tailgate. Two glass rear windows hinge from the central spine and, on production cars, open electrically; CAR found it could not get “more than a squashy bag” through each. The one-off carried luggage built for it by Schedoni of Italy, and its other features included air conditioning, cruise control, Siemens airbags and tyre pressure and temperature monitoring. The 2008 release lists stitched Connolly luggage as an option.
Morgan AeroMax specification and performance
Production AeroMaxes have the 4,799cc BMW N62 V8 with 367bhp, a six-speed manual or automatic gearbox and a claimed 0–62mph time of 4.2 seconds; the 2005 one-off had the smaller 4.4-litre engine. The figures below are Morgan’s own unless the table says otherwise.
| 2005 one-off | Production car (2008–10) | |
|---|---|---|
| Engine | BMW N62 V8, 4,398cc, 32 valves | BMW N62B48 V8, 4,799cc |
| Power | 333bhp at 6,100rpm | 367bhp (evo: 362bhp at 6,300rpm) |
| Torque | 331lb ft at 3,600rpm | 370lb ft at 3,600rpm (evo) |
| Gearbox | Six-speed ZF manual, hydraulic limited-slip differential | Six-speed manual or ZF 6HP26 six-speed automatic |
| 0–62mph | 4.5sec | 4.2sec |
| Top speed | Over 160mph | Over 170mph |
| CO2 | 264g/km | 267g/km (automatic) |
| Brakes | AP Racing: six-pot calipers on 348mm vented discs front, twin-pot on 332mm rear | ABS with electronic brake-force distribution |
| Weight | 1,150kg (CAR, prototype) | 1,180kg (evo) |
| Price new | One-off commission | £110,000 |
Sources: Morgan’s releases of March 2005 and 2008; CAR, 2006; evo, 2013.
What engine does the Morgan AeroMax have?
Customer cars have BMW’s 4.8-litre N62B48 V8, the engine BMW used in its large saloons. Morgan’s 2008 release says the Aero 8 chassis “from 2008 is fitted with the 367Bhp 4.8 litre BMW V8 engine”, and RM Sotheby’s catalogue for the car it sold in London in 2017 gives an engine number beginning N62B48. The 2005 one-off had the 4.4-litre N62; CAR drove that same car, Sturdza’s, in 2006 and gave it 325bhp at 5,400rpm, against the 333bhp at 6,100rpm in Morgan’s release, and Morgan told CAR at the time that production cars would have 380bhp. The 2008 release gives 367bhp.
The AeroMax was also the first Morgan offered with an automatic gearbox, the ZF 6HP26, and the first to use CAN bus wiring to run lighting, wipers and instruments as well as the engine, according to the 2008 release. The car RM sold in Arizona in 2011 and the one Bonhams sold in 2015 were both automatics, and Bonhams wrote that, like most AeroMaxes, its car was a left-hand-drive automatic.
How fast is the Morgan AeroMax?
Morgan claimed 0–62mph in 4.2 seconds and a top speed of more than 170mph for the production car, and said the automatic was quicker and more economical than the manual. evo put the power-to-weight ratio at 312bhp per ton. Car Enthusiast’s November 2008 data panel gave the top speed as 160mph and the kerb weight as 1,250kg, more than the 1,180kg evo quoted.
What the AeroMax is like to drive
Reviewers found it quick and grippy; what took getting used to was the long bonnet, with the driver sitting almost over the rear wheels. evo wrote that the front wheels felt “a long way out ahead” and that you had to “pour the distant nose of the car into a corner sometime before you … actually arrived there”.
Getting in and the cabin
Getting in is awkward. A SkiddMark first drive published in June 2008 described a small door opening above front wings that run three-quarters of the car’s length and pass under the doors like running boards, an upright steering wheel close to the chest, a narrow windscreen set close to the driver’s face and three wipers; it also recorded the wooden spine running down the headlining to the rear windows, which open at the touch of a switch. CAR found the dashboard top carved from a single block of ash and the fascia milled aluminium, and the pedals offset on the left-hand-drive prototype.
Engine, gearbox and noise
The side exhausts are loud outside the car and less so inside it. CAR, driving the prototype, found that wind and road noise drowned the engine on the move. The 2008 SkiddMark drive, in a 367bhp development car with the automatic, found that sitting between the pipes meant you heard only every other firing pulse unless both windows were down; it liked the ZF gearbox, especially used manually with the alloy lever, and noted that the development car lacked the throttle blip on downshifts that Morgan planned to fit. Car Enthusiast also preferred the automatic, partly because it freed space in a tight footwell.
Steering, ride and handling
Opinions of the ride differ. CAR called it “very compliant” and said the prototype was “not remotely tail happy”; Car Enthusiast found it supple on rough British roads. The SkiddMark drive found the ride “firm and fidgety on all but the smoothest surfaces”, the brakes sharply servoed, and the steering so short of self-centring that you had to steer the car out of a corner as well as into it, with mild understeer that the throttle could turn into oversteer.
How many Morgan AeroMax were made?
Morgan planned 100 AeroMaxes and built 100, numbered as a series: the car Bonhams sold in 2015 was described as number 100 of 100. The cars were built to order at Malvern Link, and the specification was each customer’s own. The car RM Sotheby’s sold in 2017, ordered for its first owner, Prince John Radziwill, was started in the week of 30 August 2009, according to Morgan’s records quoted in the catalogue; it was painted Zurillic Blue with quilted leather, and Morgan fitted the seats straight onto the floor and moved the pedals two centimetres for his height.
How many are in the UK?
DVLA figures, as published by How Rare Is My Car, show 26 AeroMaxes first registered in Britain. The figure counts first registrations, so it includes cars imported later.
| Year | First registrations |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 6 |
| 2009 | 16 |
| 2010 | 3 |
| 2011–18 | 0 |
| 2019 | 1 |
| Total | 26 |
Source: DVLA vehicle licensing statistics via How Rare Is My Car, updated 15 August 2026.
Right-hand drive and US cars
Most AeroMaxes are left-hand drive, according to the Bonhams catalogue of 2015. When Richard Hammond’s car was offered for sale in 2011, AutoGuide reported that it was one of only six right-hand-drive examples. RM’s 2011 Arizona catalogue quoted the Morgan specialist Martin Button as saying seven had been legally imported into the United States.
Who owns a Morgan AeroMax?
The known owners include two names from British television. evo listed Richard Hammond and Rowan Atkinson as buyers. Hammond’s car went on sale in March 2011 at Mole Valley Specialist Cars in Surrey, at £99,950. Other first owners are known from auction catalogues: Prince John Radziwill (the 2017 RM car) and Alain Dominique Perrin, whose car was one of two finished in Cartier’s Bordeaux livery and which he described as the most reliable car in his collection, according to the Bonhams catalogue.
Morgan AeroMax price and values today
The AeroMax cost £110,000 new, and public auction results since 2011 have ranged from £92,000 to $209,000. CAR worked out in 2006 that the coupé cost £47,500 more than the Aero 8 roadster; the SkiddMark drive of 2008 quoted £115,000.
| Date | Sale | Car | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | List price (CAR) | New | £110,000 |
| Jan 2011 | RM Auctions, Arizona, lot 158 | 2010, dark blue, automatic, under 200 miles | $209,000 (sold) |
| Mar 2011 | Mole Valley Specialist Cars, Surrey | Richard Hammond’s car, right-hand drive | £99,950 (asking) |
| Sep 2015 | Bonhams, Chantilly | Car no. 100, automatic, 6,200km | €172,500 (sold) |
| Sep 2017 | RM Sotheby’s, London, lot 108 | Chassis 0043, automatic, under 2,700km | £92,000 (sold) |
| Dec 2019 | Advert featured by PistonHeads | 2009, six-speed manual, 79 miles | £185,000 (asking) |
Sources: CAR, 2006; RM Sotheby’s Arizona 2011 lot page; AutoGuide, March 2011; the Bonhams catalogue entry as reprinted by supercars.net; RM Sotheby’s London 2017 lot page; PistonHeads, “Morgan Aeromax | Spotted”, 17 December 2019.
Of the three auction cars above, one had covered under 200 miles, one 6,200km and one under 2,700km, and the manual car PistonHeads featured in December 2019 had covered 79 miles; the asking price was £75,000 more than its £110,000 price new. In 2013 evo put the value at about £110,000, the same as the price new.
Rivals and reception
At £110,000 the AeroMax sat in “Ferrari, Aston Martin and Porsche 911 Turbo territory”, as CAR put it, and CAR’s review listed the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione and the Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster as its rivals. CAR reported that Charles Morgan saw the move into that price bracket as a logical progression.
CAR rated it four out of five in 2006, calling it “a very competent product” and doubting only the price, “a bit steep for a car that is after all using a stock BMW engine”. Car Enthusiast wrote in 2008 that “nothing really prepares you for when you first see the Aeromax in the metal”. In 2013 evo called it Morgan’s take on a super-sports car, “typically eccentric and rather cool”.
After the AeroMax: the Aero Supersports
The AeroMax’s body led straight to the Aero Supersports, a targa-roofed version shown at the Villa d’Este concours in April 2009, Morgan’s centenary year. PistonHeads, which saw it at Malvern before the show, reported that the show car was hand-made from an AeroMax body, that Morgan hoped to build at least 200, and that production would begin once the 100th AeroMax was finished. Humphries told PistonHeads that the AeroMax had “a relatively high volume cabin which you can see in a roof shape which is quite domed, so we’ve flattened that out”.
Questions
How much did a Morgan AeroMax cost new?
£110,000, the price CAR quoted in 2006 and evo gave in 2013. That was £47,500 more than the Aero 8 roadster it was based on.
Is the Morgan AeroMax made of wood?
Partly. The body panels are superformed aluminium fixed over a laminated ash frame, and the chassis underneath is the Aero 8’s bonded aluminium monocoque.
Did Richard Hammond own a Morgan AeroMax?
Yes. evo listed him among the buyers, and his right-hand-drive car was offered for sale in March 2011 at Mole Valley Specialist Cars in Surrey for £99,950.
Is the Morgan AeroMax manual or automatic?
Both were offered: a six-speed manual or ZF’s six-speed automatic, which made the AeroMax the first Morgan available with an automatic. All three cars in this page’s auction results were automatics; the 79-mile car PistonHeads featured in December 2019 was a six-speed manual.
Whose tail lights does the Morgan AeroMax use?
The Lancia Thesis saloon’s. CAR noted the borrowing in its 2006 review and thought the lamps looked “fantastic”.
When was the Morgan AeroMax first shown?
At the Geneva motor show in March 2005, as a one-off for Prince Eric Sturdza. Morgan’s 2008 production release gives the year as 2006.
Sources
- Morgan Motor Company, Aeromax announcement and technical specification, 2 March 2005, as published by New Atlas: the commission, Sturdza’s requirements, Humphries’ clay model and CATIA work, the ash frame, Charles Morgan’s “4 months” quote, the one-off’s specification.
- Morgan Motor Company, AeroMax production release, 2008, as reprinted by supercars.net: 100 cars sold within weeks, Superform body, 4.8-litre engine, ZF 6HP26 automatic, CAN bus, performance and CO2; the page also reprints the Bonhams Chantilly 2015 catalogue entry for car no. 100.
- CAR magazine, “Morgan AeroMax (2006) review”, James Foxall: the prototype drive, £110,000 price, 30 deposits, Lancia Thesis lamps, Aston Martin steering wheel, rivals, verdict.
- SkiddMark, “Morgan Aeromax: first drive”, June 2008: the development car’s cabin, gearbox, exhaust note, ride and steering; the £115,000 price.
- Car Enthusiast, “Aeromaxed”, Kyle Fortune, 21 November 2008: the origin story, driving impressions, specification panel.
- PistonHeads, “Morgan SuperSports: inside story”, Chris Rosamond, 24 April 2009: Superform construction, Humphries as chief designer, the Aero Supersports.
- Car and Driver, “Charles Morgan: What I’d Do Differently”, Mike Duff, 6 January 2011: the AeroMax named after Max Morgan.
- AutoGuide, “TopGear’s Richard Hammond is selling his Morgan”, 14 March 2011: Hammond’s car, six right-hand-drive cars, £99,950 asking price.
- RM Sotheby’s, 2010 Morgan Aeromax Coupe, Arizona 2011, lot 158: $209,000 result; Martin Button on seven US cars.
- RM Sotheby’s, 2011 Morgan AeroMax, London 2017, lot 108: £92,000 result, Radziwill specification, build date, N62B48 engine number.
- evo, “A–Z Supercars: Morgan AeroMax”, 4 December 2013: Humphries’ age, Sturdza and GT3, specification, owners, production years, value in 2013.
- PistonHeads, “Morgan Aeromax | Spotted”, Dafydd Wood, 17 December 2019: the 79-mile 2009 manual car offered at £185,000.
- Royal College of Art Research Repository, Matthew Humphries, “Morgan 3 Wheeler”: Humphries as designer of the 2011 3 Wheeler.
- How Rare Is My Car, “How many Morgan AeroMax Coupe were made?”, DVLA data updated 15 August 2026: UK first registrations by year.