Four-Wheel Drive : Restoration: It began as a hobby, but now John F. Morgan can gaze at more than 70 horse-drawn vehicles that fill his Oak View barn.

John F. Morgan is working hard to bring the horse-and-buggy days back to Ventura County.

Morgan, who started restoring old stagecoaches and other horse-drawn vehicles 15 years ago as a hobby, now makes his living at it.

Not only does he scour the country looking for old buggies and other relics from the past to polish up, he manufactures his own line of horse-drawn Petaluma carts for a clientele that includes actors Robert Wagner and Richard Widmark.

Pausing by the silver-plated rails of an 1865 hearse he restored, the owner of the Morgan Carriage Works swept his eyes proudly this week over more than 70 horse-drawn vehicles that fill his Oak View barn.

“It began as a hobby and it kind of got out of hand,” he said.

Morgan, 55, was born in Arkansas and raised in Santa Paula. He managed the Vons grocery store in Ventura and owned two grocery markets in the Ojai Valley before turning full-time to the buggy business in 1985.

As a child, Morgan recalls, he always wanted to have a horse, but his parents could not afford one. That memory gives him special pride because last weekend, with a 1903 buckboard he restored, his family won the sweepstakes prize at the Porterville Stage Coach Stampede.

“I guess I was born 100 years too late,” Morgan says of his love affair with a gasoline-free form of transportation.

Similar sentiments are shared by many others attracted to the new sport of buggy-driving that has begun gaining popularity in competitions throughout Southern California, Morgan said.

The growing popularity of old-fashioned buggy rides has created a demand for the two-wheel Petaluma cars he now manufactures, with prices beginning at $1,500.

Although the private Morgan carriage collection is seldom shown outside the Morgans’ barn, board members of the Ojai Valley Historical Society talked the family into displaying a dozen of their more unique horse-drawn vehicles from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Ojai Valley Museum.

The $5 admission price to the outdoor display and reception will benefit the museum’s expansion fund.

Morgan’s buggy business is a family enterprise. His wife, Connie, sons Pat and Jim and three full-time employees complete the staff.

“The most difficult part is getting a finished paint coat. Paint is always so important, like with a car,” Morgan said. “But we’re using modern materials because you simply can’t get the old materials, and we really don’t want to use lead-based paint.”

Traveling around the country to auctions, the Morgans have come home with buggies, buckboards, Irish jaunting carts, governess carts that nannies once used on country outings and even a replica of a Conestoga wagon, the freight car of the 1800s.

“We have an Amish man in Pennsylvania who calls us collect from his neighbor because he doesn’t have a phone,” Morgan said of one of his scouts, whose religious sect has kept horse-drawn vehicles in daily use because of its abhorrence of automobiles.

While most of the horse-drawn vehicles he collects are for sale, Morgan tends to view some of his assorted buggies and wagons as a private collection.

“I have a lot of vehicles I’m in love with that I just hate to sell, a lot of unrestored junkers,” Morgan said.

He has little time, however, for restoring his private collection. The family is inundated with restoration requests and cart orders, and also provides carriage rides and hayrides for wedding parties, schools and church groups.

The Morgans’ neighbors never know what type of vehicle family members will test-drive next along the rural Riverside Road with their three registered Morgan horses.

‘My wife always wanted a Morgan, that’s why she picked me,” Morgan jokes of his childhood sweetheart, raised in Fillmore, who helped run Ven-Oak and Corner Markets in Oak View before the couple sold them five years ago.

Now she handles the quality control, upholstery and the business bookkeeping, Morgan said. Their son Pat, 29, took welding classes in school and became a certified welder for another firm before his father urged him to work at home.

Although father and son say they are probably earning minimum wage for the number of hours they put into their work, they both speak of great satisfaction in seeking a finished product.

“Each piece is almost a work of art,” Pat Morgan said. “When it’s finished you have a product that is usually taken care of and will be around for a number of years.”

This month they are restoring a doctor’s carriage for Moorpark College and just completed renovating a mud-wagon, a lightweight stagecoach with canvas sides, for the Gene Autry Museum in Los Angeles.

“He was my idol when I was six years old,” the elder Morgan said of the singing cowboy.

Now Morgan’s son is also dressing in period costumes to compete in three-day driving competitions that include intricate arena maneuvers and timed, 10-mile cross-country marathons around obstacles such as trees and hay bales.

After winning second place in the training division of a recent event in Rolling Hills, the younger Morgan noted with irony, “The guy that won first place was in one of our carts.”

Buggy riding is becoming more popular, he said, because people are finding out that two to four people can enjoy a riding experience with just one horse.

“A lot of elderly people who enjoy horses and can’t get in the saddle can drive a buggy without getting too sore,” he added.