Issue # 271 The Long, Hard Row
The once-proud Norton marque has endured harsh treatment at unscrupulous hands over the past 35 years. Now, there’s reason to hope for better times to come.
Stuart Garner dropped out of his British high school at 16 without graduating. Working as a labourer in a fireworks factory, he watched his contemporaries returning from college, buying homes and cars. He decided right then that the only way forward for him was to own his own business: and it would be a business he knew—making fireworks. Now at 38, Garner is owner of Britain’s biggest pyrotechnics manufacturer and chairs the industry’s trade body, the British Fireworks Association.
He’s also the latest owner of Norton, a motorcycle brand that has over the last 35 years been stripped, pimped and screwed more times than … well, more times than it deserved. And unlike the litany of asset strippers, penny stock pedlars and T-shirt salesmen, Garner is actually producing motorcycles. To be fair, Kenny Dreer gave it his best shot, and got within $10 million of production. But Garner’s apparently bottomless purse has finished the job.
Whether it’s possible to sell a $25,000 motorcycle based on mid-20th century technology and with performance that’s quite modest by modern standards remains to be seen. On the other hand, some people feel the Milwaukee guys have been doing that successfully for quite a while.
Between the demise of the Commando and its reincarnation, Pa Norton’s proud name and trademark has been hawked around a succession of less than scrupulous investors, most of whom seemed interested only in how ownership of the prestigious brand could help them sell assets, shares and logo ephemera on the back of unrealistic promises to re-enter motorcycle production.
Two years after his NVT Engineering Ltd. went bust in 1976, the canny Dennis Poore acquired the remaining assets of the company to form Norton Motors (1978) Ltd. in Shenstone, Staffordshire. Having turned down opportunities in London, Doug Hele continued to work for Norton on the rotary engine. A separate company, Andover Norton, was set up to run the parts business for pre-1977 bikes. By 1982, Norton Motors was supplying limited numbers of rotary-powered Interpol 2 motorcycles to police forces and also bought back Andover Norton, consolidating its parts and service business. The air-cooled Norton Classic with the 588cc rotary engine went on sale in 1987. And a group of investors, headed by one Philippe Le Roux, acquired the company as Norton Group plc. Their intention seems to have been to sell off Norton’s remaining property holdings.
In spite of the asset stripping, Norton continued development of the rotary, launching the remarkable (38 hp from 10 kg weight!) NR731 airplane drone engine in 1989, and culminating in the RCW588 race bike that brought Steve Hislop home first in the 1992 Isle of Man TT. By this time, Le Roux was gone after being investigated for financial improprieties, and Norton’s largest creditor, Midland Bank, appointed David MacDonald to run the company. It seems MacDonald’s role was to talk up Norton’s “plan” to get back into volume motorcycle production, while simultaneously stripping the company of any assets he could find and looking for a buyer for the sad remains.
The sorry Norton saga was featured in an episode of the BBC-TV series The Troubleshooter, in which business guru Sir John Harvey Jones offered consulting and counseling to struggling companies. His conclusion: MacDonald was dreaming (or prevaricating). And his advice: close the doors.
Instead, MacDonald fulfilled the bank’s mandate by finding a buyer: Canada’s Wildrose Investments, and its principal, Nelson Skalbania. With his daughter Rozanda presiding over Shenstone and its few remaining assets, Skalbania embarked on a program of recovering (and liquidating) motorcycles that had been lent to various museums over the years—though most had understood the loans were permanent. However, Skalbania had borrowed the money to buy Norton from Aquilini Investments, who called in his loan, acquiring Norton in the process.
Under the Aquilini administration, Shenstone closed its service department, parting out the work to Startright Motors in Leeds and Reg Allen Motorcycles in London. And a new Norton motorcycle was launched: the Rotax-powered C652 “International,” built in Germany by Jo Seifert’s now independent Norton Motors Gmbh.
Splashed all over the motorcycle press in 1998 was the announcement of the V-8 Nemesis from Norton Motors International Inc. formed from March Motors, Aquilini Investment Group and Al Melling’s MCD. The company was launched on the NASDAQ exchange, Melling built a Nemesis prototype, investors bought shares, T-shirts were sold, but—surprise—no motorcycles were produced.
Three years of courtroom wrangling followed, with investor funds going missing and rights to the Norton name ending up divided among five different companies.
It was into this quagmire that Kenny Dreer and his business partner Ollie Curme strode in 2003, buying out all claims to Norton, and starting work on a brand new Commando. Dreer’s Vintage Rebuilds company had produced more than 50 VR880 Commandos, based on the 1970s era bikes, but “we were building these exploding time bombs,” admitted Dreer at the time, concluding that an all-new design was needed.
He showed a prototype of the 952 Commando in 2006, but stepping up to production tooling was prohibitively expensive, so in 2008, Dreer and Curme sold the rights, prototypes, drawings and existing tools to Stuart Garner.
The new 961 Commando follows Dreer’s prototype in appearance, but has been completely redesigned by Garner’s team. The Sport version is certainly an impressive looking machine—though the blacked-out café racer looks really wicked.
Sadly, no chance to ride the new Commando has yet come my way, but I’m sure it will soon. I’m hoping it will be worth the 35-year wait.
