Back in the early 1970s, you couldn’t buy a new Morgan in America. Technically, Morgan exported cars to the US in 1970, but the company couldn’t get an exemption from federal safety standards for the Plus 8 after that first year. Company boss Peter Morgan wasn’t bothered, so Morgan left the U.S. market. The sports cars remained forbidden fruit for the enthusiasts who fell for their particular old-school charm.
Bill Fink, who died this week in a fire at his home in Bodega, California at 77, made it his mission to get the Plus 8–and Morgan–back to America. Fink was first exposed to the Malvern, England company as a Rhodes scholar studying at Oxford and competing for the school’s rowing team in the Sixties. As Car and Driver wrote in a 1977, Fink began buying Morgan Plus 8s, converting them to left-hand drive and shipping them to the US while living in England. When he returned to San Francisco, he partnered with English car mechanic Steve Miller and founded Isis Imports in the city’s red light district in 1968.
He discovered that if a Plus 8 could be converted to run on propane, it wouldn’t have to meet any emissions standards. So, he built a propane-fueled Plus 8, tested it, and proposed the idea to Morgan in England. After some back and forth with the company and the U.S. government, Fink started importing new Plus 8s in 1977.
“There’s a good argument that, literally, he kept Morgan Malvern alive,” longtime Road & Track technical editor Dennis Simanaitis said. “The U.S. was, if you date back to the Fifties and Sixties, a major market, then along came the various regulations that complicated the life of a small manufacturer such as Morgan. And it was Bill who really singlehandedly kept Morgan alive in the U.S., and in a sense, kept Morgan alive.”
As former Road & Track editor Thos L. Bryant explained in a 1977 article, Morgan shipped Plus 8s and 4/4s to Isis Imports sans fuel tanks. Fink and his team added a propane tank, and safety equipment so the cars could be legal in America. Simanaitis tested a number of Fink’s Morgans, and praised the quality of workmanship. Fink continued importing Morgans over the years, eventually moving to Pier 33 in San Francisco’s Embarcadero. But he wasn’t just an importer. Fink was a huge figure in the Morgan community, restoring older cars, and making LS-powered hot-rods out of old Plus 8s.
Fink maintained his shop in San Francisco, though he changed his company’s name from Isis Imports to Morgan Cars USA, and eventually opened up a second shop near his home in Sonoma county. He was a consistent presence at Morgan events—just last weekend, he participated in the Morgan Sports Car Club of Northern California’s annual Oyster Run.
Simanaitis, himself a former Morgan owner, got to know Fink over the years “He was a gentle man, and you could take that as gentleman and as gentle person,” he said.
He’s survived by his wife, Judy, and his stepdaughter Tcherek. He will be missed.
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