Zonsen RE650 revives Norton twin by Ben Purvis
China's Zonsen - the recently rebranded name for the company formerly known as Zongshen - has filed industrial design registrations for a new 650 cc parallel twin roadster that will be launched under its Cyclone brand and uses the British-designed parallel twin that was originally intended for the Norton Atlas and Superlight models.
Before the Stuart Garner-owned version of Norton collapsed in early 2020 the company was forging ahead with plans to launch a range of all-new parallel twin models using a 650 cc engine derived from its 1200 cc V4. The Atlas Ranger and Atlas Nomad were scrambler-ish retro models, and the same engine was intended for the Superlight sports bike and was even shown in supercharged form in the carbon-framed Superlight SS concept from 2018.
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However, shortly before Garner's Norton collapsed in a blizzard of controversy, the engine designs were licenced to Zonsen, and now TVS - the Indian brand that has revived Norton - has little interest in bringing back the Atlas, Nomad and Superlight projects. That means the 'Norton' parallel twin may only ever be seen in its Chinese-made form.
Not that Zonsen has had it easy. The engine needed a substantial amount of work to be viable for production and the company turned to UK-based engineers at Ricardo - the company that also did the initial work on Norton's V4 - to bring the twin up to production standard. The engine has recently gone on sale in China in the RX650 adventure bike and now Zonsen plans to put it in the retro roadster shown here.
Called the Cyclone RE650, the roadster is expected to be officially launched later this year and will be a flagship model for the Cyclone brand. Its styling means it's much closer in spirit to the Atlas models that Norton planned, but like a growing number of Chinese machines it has technology that's still unusual in the West in the form of a front-mounted camera set between the headlight and windscreen.
Upside-down forks, radial brakes and a direct-action monoshock on a cast-alloy swingarm show that despite styling with a nod to the past, the RE650 has modern components to accompany its 21st century engine.
Zonsen is already developing a larger, 800 cc version of the parallel twin, expected to debut in an upscaled 'RX800' version of the RX650 adventure bike first, but sure to later filter through to the roadster seen here.
"British-designed twin heading to new Chinese roadster"
