Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1217238
NORTON MOTORCYCLES ENTERS ADMINISTRATION P104 Feature vicious circle which MV Agusta, and other such small to medi- um-sized manufacturers in Italy and elsewhere, have repeat- edly suffered from. As the only person outside Norton to have test ridden both the 1200 V4 SS and the Atlas 650 Nomad and Ranger models in production- ready guise, I can only applaud Skinner and his R&D team for having produced two such excellent platforms on the most- slender of resources. The task now is for BDO to find a buyer for the company able to bring the twin-cylinder models to production, with the V4 platform sadly likely to be consigned to cold storage. IIBUYERS STEP FORWARD And there is no shortage of suitors. Among those known to be investigating the acquisition of the Norton brand are three Indian manufacturers, as well as Russian investor Timur Sardarov, who recently completed his outright purchase of MV Agusta from the Castiglioni family. In a rerun of 2006 but with different actors, Sardarov says he's primarily interested in obtaining the use of the 1200 V4 and 650 Atlas engines, presumably for use in an MV Agusta range of models bracketing the forthcoming 950 triple, which will form the main basis of the MV family of bikes in the coming decade. Having access to the Norton trademark is less important for him—but with former Ducati boss Massimo Bordi now running MV Agusta for him, Timur's mind may be changed for him! Another entrepreneur who must remain nameless, but who has an outstanding track record in the past quarter-century of revitalizing historic brands for stock market flotation, is also working on acquiring Norton and making it a going concern—al- though if he acquires it, he'll focus on the parallel-twins which he's identified as the Norton brand's mechanical trademark, with the intention of developing a separate family of 1000-1200cc twin-cylinder mod- els to complement the 650 Atlas family. Having recently acquired Bimota, with production about to start in Italy in June of a range of models spearheaded by the all-new Euro 5 homologated, hub-center Tesi powered by its supercharged H2 four-cylinder motor, Kawasaki's parent group Kawasaki Heavy Industries may well consider Norton an attractive British acqui- sition, which combines a historic brand with leading-edge technology. Also, in Asia, apart from the obvious potential benefits to China's Zongshen giant in acquiring Norton itself, expect its billionaire rival Li Shufu to be interested in Russian investor Timur Sardarov, owner of MV Agusta, could be one of the potential Norton suitors.