Saturday, June 27, 2020

Another sad chapter in the Norton story

Powered by an aircooled rotary engine, only 100 were made in 1987

2 comments:

JP said...

I beg to (strongly) disagree on this one.
The soundtrack on this clip makes the entire argument as far as I'm concerned:
https://youtu.be/n__6tsOfzLo

Mister G said...

Yes, that is a great sound, I'm running it as a soundtrack in the background, my kid doesn't understand. The 4 rotor Mazda is another great noise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjwwV20iZYE
As a technical exercise, wonderful.
But as the next generation of a company trying to rejuvenate a legendary name, I don't think it was a solid base to build on. The idea of a production rotary engine had been abandoned by all but Mazda a decade before, and was viewed by most as a peculiarity.
Now I understand this is a simplification, the ownership of the Norton name was unclear, financing was inadequate and they did do a great job with what they had.
Sad to see the name has been dragged through the mud yet again, and this time they even had the Kenny Dreer bike to base the business on which i thought seemed to be a good place to start.

Back to the rotary... Me, I've been waiting for a rotary-engine based chainsaw since the seventies. Seems perfect.