Morgan’s David Young and the art of woodwork

Play a quick word-association game with car makers. BMW means grilles. Jaecoo suggests Poundland. Morgan brings to mind wood. Whether you are as ancient as the Malvern Hills nearby, or still too short to peer over the front wings above the running boards, you are likely to know Morgan for its resolutely traditional British sports cars made from timber.

That is not quite the full story. Six years ago, Morgan introduced a bonded aluminium chassis beneath the long-serving Plus Four, yet even the new £102k Supersport uses a hand-crafted ash framework beneath its curvaceous body. Inside the workshops, huge wooden panel formers still shape those familiar flowing lines; they resemble railway sleepers imagined by Salvador Dali.

You will only glimpse that wood, however, by visiting Morgan’s 112-year-old factory on Pickersleigh Road. How could the company put its classic association with this lightweight, sustainable and adaptable wonder material on display, allowing it to be treasured, admired and celebrated? David Young is the man for the task.

Photography: Tom Barnes

Morgan woodwork at the Malvern factory

“ My job title? Erm, I don’t really have one. I’m just a woodworker.” Modestly, he takes me around his ‘office’: a sweet-smelling section of the wood shop, housed in one of Morgan’s appealing red-brick buildings. David could reasonably call himself ‘head craftsman’ or ‘wood whisperer in chief’, yet he is content to be ‘just a woodworker’.

Morgan was not where he first learned the craft. “I’m a cabinet maker,” he explains. “From 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, ‘well you only get one mum, don’t you?’ so I thought I’d better find something nearer home.”

While talking, he rifles through a drawer and shows me photographs from his portfolio. “This is called a Vortex cabinet. I did one of these for the Queen’s nephew, David Linley. You can still get them now through Linley – about £110,000. It’s artwork, really.” David admits, somewhat ruefully, that he cannot recall the number of hours required to make it.

Did his talent for timber and instinct for grain run in the family? “At 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’t got a job and my mum was like ‘you need to sort yourself out’. 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.

"At the time it was only a two-man business and one of them had come off his motorbike and couldn’t work. He took me on for an apprenticeship, I got taxis to work for two years... and stayed there for 26.”

When I ask whether moving into the car industry had always been an ambition, another touching family link emerges. “My brother’s 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.”

David Young’s bespoke Morgan interiors

Today, David reviews the database of new-car orders, records the selected trim materials and finishes, prepares the raw stock, and supervises his apprentices. The Plus Four alone offers 14 centre-console finishes, 11 of them different woods. Buyers can specify aluminium strips inlaid like pinstripes, or an intricate marquetry sideboard. Although these are the visible finished faces, beneath them lies a carefully shaped, lasagne-like layering of plywood and adhesive.

His background in low-volume, designer furniture has also helped him take Morgan into fresh territory for personalisation: woodworking of the kind more readily associated with the coachbuilding departments of Rolls or Pagani.

“One of my first big projects here was woodwork for the Spiaggina [derived from Italian for beach – think Morgan beach buggy] which was for the owner of the company, Andrea,” [Bonomi, founder of Morgan’s majority shareholder Investindustrial]. The vehicle was a striking one-off, open-top special, featuring an enormous teak arch and polished decking with the look of a yacht. “That was tricky knowing who it was for and getting it to the stage I’d be happy with it, plus there were no drawings to go off. That was a nice piece to do, and then I’ve been involved with Midsummer.”

Midsummer teak craftsmanship

As ever, David understates matters: his latest ‘involvement’ is a monument to his skill. Midsummer is a limited series of wood-topped barchettas developed with Italian design royalty Pininfarina. Every one of the 50 cars had sold before its May 2025 reveal. Once it became public, the waiting list was twice oversubscribed. Its defining detail is 83 square metres of teak, only 0.6mm thick, painstakingly built up and laminated over around 30 hours for each car.

"I worked 65 days straight on Midsummer with no weekends,” David admits. “I normally get here at about five in the morning. My wife’s been on at me, saying I’m working too much.

Mrs Young will hopefully be feeling forgiving, as David believes Midsummer points towards the future. “I need to get away from the regular production stuff. Sam, my apprentice, can do that by himself now. I’ll be involved with more special projects – but not next week,” he grins. “I’ve got a week off.”