Norton

Norton

The sorry tale of the historic Norton motorcycle brand continues to see chapters of disappointment added to its illustrious story. Having been founded in 1898 and seen many decades of, mostly, success, with some excellent race stories and achievements added to the annals of the international motorcycle industry (not least on the Isle of Man), since the 1950s the brand has mostly lurched from one ultimately doomed ownership scenario to the next.

Norton production was based in a former airline call centre in a two-storey office block in the car park behind Donington Hall.

Acquired by a certain Stuart Garner around thirteen years ago, and re-established at Donington Hall in the UK (alongside the Donington Park race track), a company that had been heavily supported by the UK tax payer and various, generally ill-fated investment and finance plans, finally folded and filed for bankruptcy in January this year.
For a project that at one stage had even boasted the hiring of internationally recognised motorcycle design guru Pierre Terblanche, the ambitions had always exceeded the resources and reality has finally brought the fantasy crashing down. Hundreds of people, from consumers who have paid deposits, or in some cases, paid dealers in full in advance for complete bikes, to pension pot investors, banks, the UK tax authorities and police fraud investigators are looking for Garner.
You could fill a book with the various twists, turns and failed plans that have characterised this latest short and spectacularly inept iteration in the life (and now death) of the Norton brand, but one that sums up the parallel universe in which Garner operated came in the second half of 2017. Garner signed a 20-year "design and licence" deal with Chinese conglomerate Zongshen (which makes around four million motorcycle and scooter engines annually) in an attempt to commercialise the Norton IP.
The stated aim had been to see Zongshen build a new 650 cc twin engine that had theoretically been jointly engineered and developed by Norton and Ricardo - for likely production under the 'Zongshen' or 'Cyclone' brands.
However, like so many of the deals that had Garner's fingerprints on them, it appears to have come to nothing. Although the value of the deal was to remain private, the initial consideration paid to Norton was described at the time as being in the "millions of dollars", with an ongoing royalty on each engine produced.
Garner's final insult to all those who had shown faith in him (and the project) down the years was to sell off the rights to the 961 engine platform (IP and tooling) to Chinese scooter manufacturer Jinlang Science and Technology Co Ltd. Jinlang is quoted as saying that it intends to "work with our design partner in Italy to develop a new motorcycle using the 961 engine, which we will sell worldwide".
At the time of writing, various phoenix ownership scenarios have been suggested. Triumph politely but firmly distanced themselves from rumours that the two brands may be reunited again, and names from Stefan Pierer to Zongshen, Bajaj to BMW and Mahindra to Hero have all been mentioned as possible deal makers.
However, the truth is that in the context of these troubled times and the likely recession into which the motorcycle industry is about to be plunged, the damage inflicted on the Norton brand might prove to be fatal this time round.
As this edition of IDN went to press, it emerged that the auditors analysing the Norton accounts appear to have found a £28m hole.