The Morgan Midsummer is a stunning, Pininfarina-designed barchetta

What happens when Morgan’s timeless approach meets Pininfarina’s constantly evolving one? Well, you’ll end up with something like this: the stunning Morgan Midsummer. Built to celebrate two centuries of shared coachbuilding experience, just 50 examples will be produced. 

The shape remains quintessentially Morgan, with the squat silhouette retaining the iconic wheel arches and long bonnet. The body is hand-crafted from aluminium and takes more than 250 hours to create. That’s roughly the same amount of time it would take to do a full lap of the M25 during rush hour… if you’re lucky. 

We're told that the surfacing also harks back to Pininfarina’s design from the 1930s and 40s, and you get bespoke 19in alloys plus more than 400 individual layers of wood laminated together to create that interior framework. The simple approach continues with the quintet of dials across the unpretentious dash, with the air vents and gear selector located on the full-length centre console. 

Sitting beneath all that is Morgan’s thoroughly modern ‘CX’ generation bonded aluminium platform and a turbocharged six-cylinder engine plus eight-speed automatic gearbox. There's no word on specific outputs just yet, but if the engine has been pulled directly from the Plus Six there should be 335bhp, 369lb ft of torque and a 0-62mph time of around four seconds. Plus, it should only weigh around 1,000kg.

"I am most pleased with the rear three-quarter proportions and how the car sits thanks to obsessive attention-to-detail to refine the wheel-to-body relationship," said Morgan’s head of design, Jonathan Wells. "The introduction of the elegant dropping shoulder line is accentuated by an eccentric swept tail, fuller bodied aesthetic complemented by intelligent surfacing detail, and carefully defined creases control highlights as they move across the gently crowned surfaces. Midsummer establishes design foundations to build upon for future Morgan models.”

Some excellent design speak there, but it really is a rather lovely design so we'll let Wells off.

His opposite number at Pininfarina, Felix Kilbertus, said: "While Pininfarina’s spirit of constantly looking forward is most manifest in the aerodynamic solutions directing airflow over the cabin or in the functional ventilation elements, the innate sculptural sensitivity of the Italian tradition shapes the low and essential silhouette, producing a beautifully surfaced and sensationally proportioned roadster, celebrating the ideal of light-hearted motoring."

There's no word on pricing for the Midsummer just yet, but that's purely academic at this point anyway, because every single one of the 50 cars has already been sold.