Fellow entrepreneurs share their stories so that us so that we can build a better business.
Hi - mine name is Jim James and I'm your host. In 2019 I started this podcast to help entrepreneurs learn from one another. When I started the Entrepreneurs Organization chapter in Beijing, I realized that the best insights came from people who had already done the work.
If you're running a business; this show is my gift to you. It's hard enough as it is, and I hope that this podcast solves just one problem to help you on your way.
Telling stories is a big part of building a brand, and as the British entrepreneur in China who imported the first of the hand made Morgan cars, I was interviewed on Tv, print and in this case for a Beijing radio station. Bruce Connelly visited our Gongti stadium studio on 08 February 2014 and we recorded this interview which was aired across China on the English language network and the internet. Close your eyes when you listen to this to see if you can imagine yourself surrounded by open top sports cars in a luxury showroom just a few miles away from Tiananmen Square.
Jim sitting in here, this is a school boy's dream.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. Well, we're here today Bruce at the Morgan car showroom here in Bronte, in Beijing, Morgan cars.
Speaker 1:
I'm looking at models here, which could take me back to the 1830s. The Open Road in England in the countryside.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's right. Bruce Morgan cars are the oldest privately held car company in the world. Originally founded in 1909. In Malden, in western, the west side of England, lovely rolling hills there. And the cars we've got in front of us that you can see right now is a very nice blue, deep blue with a cream interior, Morgan roadster, just a very recent car, but the lines are a 1936 a line of car. So the Morgan is a classic car. But there's actually recently built a built to order for an individual customer. And we're very lucky to have him here in Beijing.
Speaker 1:
The great thing about these cars is that the soft top so you can actually take the top down, you're sitting there and these beautiful leather seats. And to me this is the very Epitome, the very feeling of home driving should be actually amazing leather that's from Scotland, from where you're from Britain
Speaker 2:
thing for for those of us that grew up driving cars that were real cars, if you like we're really the driver has contact with the road, we have a wooden steering wheel of relatively simple suspension, great brakes, but a really nice powerful engine. But none of the new technologies that today really separate a car from the driver. So we know that when you drive a morgue, and you really feel like yeah, you're just having great fun being behind the wheel again. And it really takes us all back to the excitement of what driving should be. You just mentioned that driving should be fun.
Speaker 1:
There's no way that driving in Beijing on assigned one other f1 could be described as fun. But take that car and take it up to meet you in county. I think that can be great fun.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's the thing. The whole point about driving a Morgan is that it really it's an occasion. I mean, these days, often we get an economy go from A to B and we really don't remember the journey much. But in a Morgan it's an occasion getting in the car, driving the car in town, I've driven them they're fun, but when you get out of the sand to the open road, top down wind through your hair, driving 6070 miles an hour, that's just sheer pleasure, sheer excitement.
Speaker 1:
Somehow it remains to be of a can of Lawrence of Arabia back in England, you know that you'd have been in the English countryside, the quiet roads, winding roads through the through the hills that move on just this real idea that you're in charge of this handcrafted machine? Well,
Speaker 2:
That's true. And I think the great thing about their driving experience with a Morgan is it with the top down as you and the steering wheel and the engine and the and the wheels hitting onto the tarmac and you can feel everything. So as one person described driving a Morgan is like driving in Technicolor, you're out there. And it's not just what you see. It's what you feel. It's the wind, it's the smells. And it's the sound, it's a complete rush when you drive a Morgan car.
Speaker 1:
To be a car like that is wasted on the Earth Wind on the sign why that car, I'm thinking of the scenery operating the miyun operating the Great Wall, operating see Neiman go in the cross line somewhere where it's countryside, the open road, and you the car, and the road is just perfect.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's right about recently, we had a test drive up at me and all the people that came up and drove the car were the top down you can see the hills as you can see part of the Great Wall and the distance. And there's this real sense of being at one with the nature and with the countryside. And that's really what a Morgan comes into its own when you can get out into the countryside and just enjoy the speed and nature all at once.
Speaker 1:
Let's just again what cars really are for in the city I walk or take the bus over half through but I loved driving. And I used to have a sports car at the top down. And there's something about when you eat the top down the sound changes the whole feeling of what you're doing.
Speaker 2:
I think that's right, I mean, so now are softer. Now in modern cars. We're really in a in a metal cocoon, and they separate us from from our environment from each other. And we take the top down under Morgan, we can hear the engine noise. We can't always hear the people next to us chatting too much. And you can hear the radio sometimes it was really loud. But you can hear the road you can hear the wind and you can just hear the countryside rushing by and that's that's really just a great thrill. This gets the adrenaline rushing in a way that really most cars don't do these days.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, because some of these cars that you'll see particularly here in the workers Stadium, some of these really are cocooned boxes that's not sewn from the outside world, and you're lost what's going on around you. But this kind of idea of the car where you've got the fuel coming through even the steering column, it's driving,
Speaker 2:
Well, that's fine. In this case, we have ruden handmade steering wheels from moto Lita, a company in Hampshire. And when you're driving a car like a Morgan, you're really sort of feeling like you're there. You're really present. And I think that's what's great about a Morgan car. I enjoy the journey when I'm in the Morgan car, not just the getting from A to B.
Speaker 1:
I could imagine that but let's go way back. Let's go all the way back to England. We're talking of the oldest privately owned car business in the world. That must take us a long time ago.
Speaker 2:
Well that's right the 1909 the original cars were actually three wheelers built by the grandfather of the current Morgan owners a chat with HMS Morgan, and he built three wheelers to get him across the Malvern hills to work every morning three wheelers that actually were very, very popular back in the 1910s 1920s. Until only the 1930s. In the interwar years they did introduce a four wheeler
Speaker 1:
These cars then initially, they were built on Koch building technology, Koch building engineering given stagecoach.
Speaker 2:
Actually originally the the cars pretty much use the same frame, not just Morgan, but all cars, Bentley, Rolls Royce, even Mercedes were all built really taking a horse and carriage carriage and putting wheels and an engine on to replace the horse. That's how they all started. And I think what's special about Morgan is that today, we still have in the same factory, some 180 across the board handbuilding cars individually for each customer. When we see him building, we're talking about actually a metal chassis, but actually a wooden frame with an alloy wrapped on it. And with real leather. It's actually hand tailored to the seats and bonnets that are actually hand cut from one large piece of steel. So the technologies and the craftsmanship in Morgan in the factory movement is actually still the craftsmanship and the technology and indeed, some of the same tools are used nearly over 100 years later,
Speaker 1:
you heard a video on here, and I was amazed to see this that you had carpenters working in wood creating these wooden frames. I've never seen this in a car before.
Unknown:
I guess if you had been around maybe 80 years ago like in factories you might have seen more
