At last the Plus 8 saga has been resolved. What should have been a simple customs delivery and inspection went wrong in early May when the CIQ officers took the 4.8L , GBP200,000 Morgan for a spin, literally, along the tree lined streets of Tianjin. The ensuing crash led to a clash between the official agency responsible for authorising cars for the Chinese roads, who we need to approve Morgan cars, and the newly acquired partner, San He in Chengdu who had parted with the funds already. The situation unfolded over 3 months. The customer didn't want it and demanded a new car. CIQ insisted that it could be fixed in China; indeed they knew people who could help us rebuild what was the first ever Plus 8, hand built wooden framed car to ever reach the middle kingdom. Simple enough. No Thanks. If we sent the car back to the UK to be fixed it had to return as the same car or lose the GBP100,000 in taxes already paid. If we sent it back to be scrapped we would have to declare a fault with the car, and hence with all Plus 8's being imported; including the second one we had in the container. Finally, we managed to agree to have the car released back to the UK. Meanwhile we had the showroom launch with one of the two Plus 8's which had arrived on the same bill of lading. A mistake. The other Plus 8 has not been allowed to leave our showroom because until the matter of the crash was fully settled, and the replacement car back in China, approved, taxes paid, and approved by CIQ again. As we had paid the tax on the Plus 8 we had to have an identical car made. However, a chassis number is unique to one vehicle. The crashed one had a salvage value in the UK and could have the chassis replaced at the factory, but the customer didn't want a car which had been rebuilt. The choice was to write off the difference between the compensation we could extract from CIQ and the salvage value of the Plus 8; we had immediately re-ordered the new Plus 8 from the Factory knowing that this would take 6 months to build and ship. A proper China dilemma. In the event Morgan were very accommodating and agreed to rebuild an identical car and credit me with salvage value on the old Plus 8; effectively freeing up the VIN and some credit. However, we had to pay for the new Plus 8 well in advance of being able to recover the salvage value due to the time the assessors required. Meanwhile CIQ had us write a letter to agree to no further claims against them, and paid us monies via some personal accounts so that it could not be traced. Jason Huang of San He was also a true gentlemen about this - we were not able to deliver his car for some 12 months after he had paid for it, and 6 months after the first one was proudly shown to him safely out of the container; pre crash. Mr Wu, who could not have his car released in June, as planned, still has his car here in our showroom pending the release documents. As his car is also now 6 months late in delivery we have to forfeit some GBP28,000 as the final instalment. We had to raise an invoice from Morgan Motor Co for the repair to this car, as it had to be the identical car being shipped in to avoid paying the import tax again. Too little and it would raise suspicion, but every GBP of repair would be taxed at the top rate of duty as applied to a 4.8L luxury car. I wrote a cheque for GBP8,000 just to cover the tax on repairs which never took place! The final reckoning will be that this misadventure cost us some GBP80,000 in lost working capital for 6 months, and a real loss of some GBP75,000. This is like rolling the dice in Monopoly and having to pick up a Community Chest card. It is no one's fault but it can take one of the game for a few rounds, or permanently if the resources aren't there to handle it. By way of a gratitude to the Plus 8 customers, Morgan decided to add a 5kg luggage rack and suitcase to the Plus 8 mid production. As they didn't include this on any invoice, nor in any photos prior to shipping, we discovered the new addition to our 'identical' Plus 8 and secretly hoped that this would pass CIQ without undue attention. The extra weight and length created by the luggage rack meant that this Plus 8 no longer meets the car specifications logged in the China CIQ Register of Vehicles. Consequently we had to either leave the rack on and not pass the CIQ tests ("surely this is an adornment Sir, not a fixture" met with no compassion) or remove it. A decision was taken in Tianjin although I wasn't told that in the process the bolts sheered off leaving unsightly holes in the aluminium underside where the brackets held the rack. Rather than make one hole and call me, they proceeded to make all eight holes and let me find out myself. Luckily these holes were not sufficient to stop the car passing CIQ, but of course the San He team were rightly unhappy; another China moment. So now the Plus 8 is in the rightful home, in the Morgan Chengdu Showroom (car not in this photo). Surely that luggage can be used to good use, packing all my nightmares into it and be stowed safely under a bed in S.W. China. Just as we delivered the Plus 8 to it's stylish new home, we had the amazing news that the CIQ officer had managed to reverse a new bright yellow Morgan Roadster into a post......I must just into that massive suitcase myself...
