Features

Bankers, Swiss or otherwise, are not currently flavour-of-the-month. But Prince Eric Sturdza, a descendant of the Moldavian royal family, former pro tennis player and now President of Barings Bank in Geneva, shares our irritation. "I would never expose my clients to the sort of risk that some other banks have engaged in. That's why I'm still here".

No sub-prime shenanigans for him, then. Or us. We're at the Villa d'Este Concorso d'Eleganza, Europe's premier classic car concours event, on the shore of Lake Como. Postcodes rarely come any fancier than this. George Clooney has a house just up the road, and helicopters buzz above the water's smooth expanse. Water that's teeming with gleaming Riva Aquarama boats.

Men like Sturdza glide effortlessly through this kind of world, as well-connected as they are well-heeled. Many have paid telephone-number-style sums for the most revered Ferraris, Bugattis and Maseratis. Some cut a flamboyant swathe; others are discreet to the point of carefully crafted invisibility. Sturdza is the latter.

He's on our radar not because of bouffant Euro hair or supermodel arm candy, but because he has a serious penchant for a tiddly British car manufacturer: Morgan. He's helped bankroll the company's increasingly successful GT3 endurance racing campaign, and owns countless road cars. More recently, though, the relationship has deepened.

Back in 2004, Prince Eric decided he rather liked the idea of a proper Aero 8 coupe, and asked Charles Morgan - current boss and grandson of H.F.S. Morgan – to give it some thought. In an echo of the classic Italian carrozzeria tradition, here was a commission to build a genuinely bespoke car. The gently self-deprecatory Morgan takes up the story.

"Eric liked the idea of an Aero 8 GT, something in the spirit of a Tour de France Ferrari. He's a great friend to the company, and I don't know what we'd do without him, to be honest. Anyway, he suggested this car, and thought it would be a great thing to have at the Geneva motor show. In the meantime, Matt Humphries, now our designer, had been bombarding me with sketches he'd been doing before he'd even graduated from the design course at Coventry University. I thought, 'This kid's a genius!' So I asked him to work up an Aero 8 coupe. Eric paid for us to do a prototype – I didn't overcharge him, before you ask - and the Aeromax is the result."

"When I first saw it," Sturdza continues, "I have to admit it was nothing like I expected. But I still loved it." Enough, in fact, to order four of them – "two manual cars, and two automatics," he confirms - although the other 96 Maxes in a production run strictly limited to 100 were all quickly snapped up. Prospective owners include the likes of Rowan Atkinson, Paul O'Grady and some bloke called Richard Hammond.

"About 150 people contacted the factory," says Charles Morgan, "and I phoned 80 of them back to carry out an impromptu customer survey. You know, what would they pay, how many should we make, what sort of spec would they like. We didn’t wait long for the deposits to arrive."

Once again, Morgan's famously arse-about-face methodology - remember the late Sir John Harvey-Jones's programme Troubleshooter? - has paid dividends. Sturdza could probably buy the company 10 times over, but he prefers things the way they are, and, besides, Charles Morgan doesn’t want to sell. Yet. "We've received various offers over the years," he says mysteriously.

So while Noble, TVR and others have slithered sideways into oblivion, Morgan prevails and prospers. It's still entirely family run, debt-free, and turning a tidy profit. Why? Because few other companies in the world have a better understanding of their customer. Sir Alan Sugar, reality telly's businessman du jour, would be impressed.