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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I n 1969, Neil Tolhurst took a year off from college to travel around Europe with a buddy. When his friend bailed on the trip at the last minute, Tolhurst called an audible, spent a couple of months in England, and then decided to buy a motorcycle before he came home. The motorcycle he bought was a gorgeous red Norton Commando, one of the best sport bikes of its era. Amazingly, a half-century later, Tolhurst still owns the Norton. That in itself is a rarity, but it›s even more improbable when you consider the Norton survived a theft attempt, being put up for sale, a garage fire and its owner›s road racing career. But through it all, the Norton stayed in Tolhurst›s possession, and as a result, today he has a really sweet British classic with a great story. The story begins in the summer of 1969. It was an epic summer as summers go. The Stone- wall Uprising, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Manson murders and Woodstock all happened that summer. For Tolhurst, the end of the summer was the start of a trek through Europe. "I was 20 and had taken a year off between my sophomore and junior years in college and de- cided to do some traveling," Tolhurst says. "I went over to England. I had the intention of meeting a friend of mine in France and going around Europe. That didn't work out, so I spent two months in England." To get around, Tolhurst had a Vespa scooter he'd taken in a trade with an American tourist he had met. In exchange, this person got Tolhurst›s plane ticket back to America. "I rode that Vespa around London for several P100 A MAN AND HIS NORTON Neil Tolhurst and his 1969 Norton Commando have 50 years of stories together. weeks until the rear wheel was about to fall off, and I ended up trading it in for the Norton," Tolhurst said. Buying the Commando was another last-minute change of plan. "I was planning to by a BSA Royal Star for two reasons," he says. "One, I always loved the beautifully sculpted crankcases, cylinders and cylinder head on those BSAs, and it was the lowest-cost big twin option." Going into a London dealership to buy the Royal Star, Tolhurst stopped in his tracks when he walked in, and before him was this shiny red Commando. "I knew about Commandos because they had been importing them to America for a couple of years, and I had friends who had them," Tolhurst said. "But the red version, they called it Grenadier red, wasn't in the states yet. I saw that, and it was—