{"id":1879442,"date":"2026-04-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1879442"},"modified":"2026-04-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T21:00:00","slug":"meet-the-former-cabinet-maker-who-crafts-the-wood-in-a-morgan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1879442","title":{"rendered":"Meet the former cabinet-maker who crafts the wood in a Morgan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Quick game of car company word association? BMW: grilles. Jaecoo: Poundland. Morgan: wood. Whether you\u2019re as old as the nearby Malvern Hills or not yet tall enough to see over those running board front wings, chances are you know Morgan as the staunchly traditional British sports cars made out of wood.<\/p>\n

OK, not entirely. Morgan switched to a bonded aluminium chassis under the venerable Plus Four six years ago, but even in the new \u00a3102k Supersport, the sweeping bodywork is supported by a crafted ash frame. On the workbenches, Morgan still employs enormous wooden panel formers, looking like railway sleepers from a Salvador Dali painting, to create those trademark flowing curves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But you only see said timber if you\u2019re visiting Morgan\u2019s 112 year old factory down Pickersleigh Road. How to bring that classic Morgan association with this lightweight, sustainable, versatile miracle material out into the open, to be cherished, admired, and celebrated? That\u2019s where David Young\u2019s your guy.<\/p>\n

Photography: Tom Barnes<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMy job title? Erm, I don\u2019t really have one. I\u2019m just a woodworker.\u201d He\u2019s humbly showing me round his \u2018office\u2019 \u2013 a fragrant corner of the wood shop in one of Morgan\u2019s charming redbrick outbuildings. David could rightfully claim to be \u2018head craftsman\u2019 or \u2018wood whisperer in chief\u2019, but he\u2019s happy to be \u2018just a woodworker\u2019.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t learn his trade at Morgan. \u201cI\u2019m a cabinet maker,\u201d he explains. \u201cFrom the age of 16, I worked for a company just over the hill making high end furniture. I worked there for 26 years, and learned a lot, then I had an opportunity come up in Wrexham. Another company prised me away. Sadly I was only there about six months before my mother got ill and I thought, \u2018well you only get one mum, don\u2019t you?\u2019 so I thought I\u2019d better find something nearer home.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As he speaks, he leafs through a drawer showing me pictures of his portfolio. \u201cThis is called a Vortex cabinet. I did one of these for the Queen\u2019s nephew, David Linley. You can still get them now through Linley \u2013 about \u00a3110,000. It\u2019s artwork, really.\u201d David ruefully admits he doesn\u2019t know how many hours went into its manufacture.<\/p>\n

Was being a whizz with wood and a god of grain in the blood? \u201cAt school I knew I wanted to do engineering or woodwork. I was quite good with my hands. Unfortunately my dad died when I was 16, and I left school, hadn\u2019t got a job and my mum was like \u2018you need to sort yourself out\u2019. So I phoned around all the local woodworking places, and there were no jobs as such, so I phoned up Alan Elridge [local bespoke furniture maker] and he was doing a big job for Unilever: a five-metre boardroom table and 16 chairs.<\/p>\n

“At the time it was only a two-man business and one of them had come off his motorbike and couldn\u2019t work. He took me on for an apprenticeship, I got taxis to work for two years… and stayed there for 26.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask David if it was ever an ambition to transition into the car scene. Again, there\u2019s a poignant family connection. \u201cMy brother\u2019s worked here for nine years, and my dad always wanted me to work here. It was always known as a good place to work in Malvern.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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David\u2019s day-to-day now involves scouring the database of new car orders, noting the chosen trim materials and finishes, then preparing the raw materials and overseeing his apprentices. On the Plus Four alone, there are 14 centre console finishes available, including 11 different woods. You can have aluminium strakes inlaid like pinstripes, or a complex marquetry sideboard. These are the finished surfaces, but underneath it\u2019s a lasagne-like sandwich of ply and adhesive, exactingly formed to the correct shape.<\/p>\n

But his experience from few-off designer label furniture has made David push Morgan into new realms of individualisation \u2013 the sort of woodworking you might expect from a coachbuilding division at Rolls or Pagani.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my first big projects here was woodwork for the Spiaggina [derived from Italian for beach \u2013 think Morgan beach buggy] which was for the owner of the company, Andrea,\u201d [Bonomi, founder of Morgan\u2019s majority shareholder Investindustrial]. The car was a dramatic one-off open-top special with a giant teak arch and polished yacht-like decking. \u201cThat was tricky knowing who it was for and getting it to the stage I\u2019d be happy with it, plus there were no drawings to go off. That was a nice piece to do, and then I\u2019ve been involved with Midsummer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again partial to an understatement, David\u2019s most recent \u2018involvement\u2019 is a shrine to his craft. The Midsummer is an exclusive run of wood-topped barchettas created in partnership with Italian design royalty Pininfarina. All 50 sold out before the car was revealed in May 2025. After it went public, the waiting list was twice oversubscribed. Its signature feature? Eighty three square metres of teak just 0.6mm thick, painstakingly layered and laminated over some 30 hours per car.<\/p>\n

“I worked 65 days straight on Midsummer with no weekends,\u201d David admits. \u201cI normally get here at about five in the morning. My wife\u2019s been on at me, saying I\u2019m working too much.<\/p>\n

Hopefully Mrs Young is in a forgiving mood, because David reckons Midsummer shows the way forward. \u201cI need to get away from the regular production stuff. Sam, my apprentice, can do that by himself now. I\u2019ll be involved with more special projects \u2013 but not next week,\u201d he grins. \u201cI\u2019ve got a week off.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick game of car company word association? BMW: grilles. Jaecoo: Poundland. Morgan: wood. Whether you\u2019re as old as the nearby Malvern Hills or not yet tall enough to see over those running board front wings, chances are you know Morgan as the staunchly traditional British sports cars made out of wood. OK, not entirely. Morgan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1879442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1879442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1879442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1879442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1879442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1879442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}