Norton, based near Donington Park, do factory tours on Friday's, and I went on one a couple of months ago. They have the TT bikes from previous years lined up and I recollect correctly the early ones were standard Aprilia V4's in old Norton rotary frames. They were developed over recent years and the most recent TT bike had a bespoke frame and an Aprilia motoGP engine, apparently the ECU was a bit all or nothing which made riding it a bit difficult... They said the new V4 road bike engine was developed by Ricardo Engineering, but the frame would be made in house, however the tour didn't include the V4, but concentrated on the current twins. Although it's only a small place the factory tour was quite interesting, at a leisurely pace, knowledgable tour guide, photos allowed, chat to the employees, etc, probably a couple of hours, and not the Ducati 'speed march' tour. There is hardly any automation, and a lot of skilled fitters and fabricators - which was nice!. The tours are limited to 20 people each week and are booked up for some time. the party I joined included owners of the new models from Australia, Japan and Germany, all really happy with their bikes. Well worth putting your name down for. Mr Bimble.
Happy Days - received my build/ltd edn No on Minday and seems viewings of the bike and meeting the build team will be November so looking forward to that - and no doubt that will be deposit day! Be interesting to see what build up / interest there is meantime as this will no doubt sway how we go from here.......
Big reveal at tne factory Monday week - ahead of the official launch Will get some pics then drum up some noise to see who is interested in purchasing a ltd edn !
KTM are going to sell a limited edition track day replica of their V4 GP bike for the millionaires club. Ducati are working on a new V4 Desmo and now there's this Norton. That would be some set to have in the garage. The Norton looks like an R1 to me, especially the carbon version which I like. Less keen on the all-over polished look.
I do wish they would drop the chrome frame thing... it's so 1990 spondon... and the bike to me looks heavy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
So went to the NEC yesterday to take another look at the SS which is a long way off delivery and a keeper/investment - and ended up ordered up an RR in carbon for the new ride Excited not the word. A well loved pani 899 for sale in the summer ...... Great team of people at Norton from CEO to chief enginner and builders on the stand all very engaging and took time to discuss all at length - if all dealers / manufaturters had as much heart and soul rather than being "just engineers" the bike world would be an even better place
