DOUG MORGAN - Inducted 2004

Supporter - Sports Car and Road Racing

Doug’s Automotive, 12th Street in New Westminster, 1960s  (photo courtesy Morgan family)

by Doug Harder, 2004, updated 2006

Doug Morgan and his wife, Eileen, owned an automotive shop in New Westminster called Doug's Automotive Ltd. This popular Royal City location was home for many a race car in the fifties and sixties. They sponsored Digney Speedway cars at one time two Hudsons, one driven by Don Benson and the other by Denny Newton. For visiting out of town race car travellers it was a pit stop when on the road to Digney Speedway or Westwood Racing Circuit.

Most people will remember Doug's as the sponsor of a high flying, red roadster Datsun with Don Lamont behind the wheel. Whether at Westwood or racing across Canada in the Shell 4000 rallies, Don was a consistent winner. Doug pioneered a philosophy that was adopted by NASCAR: "Race on Sunday and Sell on Monday".

From 1961 to 1971, Doug's Automotive was a dealer for Datsun cars (later called Nissan). In its first year, this modest auto shop sold seven or eight of these new Japanese cars. The second year they sold twenty-eight cars and the third year they sold one hundred, and things were looking up.

The more races Don won, the more press he received and the more spectators noticed the Datsun was

Doug Morgan, 2004

winning and stopped by to see this dealer and its new line up of cars, Doug added a second driver to the stable in Lloyd Saunders who was also a talented driver. Both drivers left their previous jobs to work in sales.

Doug had sponsored and supported Don in his first attempt at motorsport in parking lot gymkhanas. Then it was car rallies across the countryside, and then road racing at Westwood, the SIR road course in Seattle and also at the Portland Rose Cup in Oregon. When Doug was a car dealer in the mid sixties, Datsun, as a manufacturer, wanted the exposure and national attention in the biggest Road Rally of

all, the Shell 4000. This Rally, as the name implies, was 4,000 miles long and went right across Canada. Don Lamont, with Ed Deak as his navigator, competed for several years and placed as high as second amongst the world's best.

The Nissan group took over the Datsun car and wanted to change the dealer franchises. Doug's Automotive and Datsun parted company about 1971. The new Trapp Motors GM dealership had moved from New Westminster to North Road and went under. GM wanted a dealer in the area, and a new smaller building was constructed, Doug's now had 45 people and sold six hundred cars per year before falling on tough times,. Doug's closed in 1975, and Doug retired to Langley.

His two sons, Terry and Trevor, are both auto enthusiasts. Terry has his own shop in New Westminster called Morgan's Automotive, and Doug's grandson drag races at Mission Raceway today. Trevor is a keen oval enthusiast born a year before Digney closed. Trevor, throughout the years, has gathered photos, movies and trophies on Digney, and now boasts 1,500 photographs in his collection.