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/126816
Author Neale Shilton specialized in selling police-model motorcycles. Here he rides a police Norton in the Circuit des Pyrenees. 1970. the Brits blew a big deal DOW By Neale Shilton / I It was 4:00 a.m. on the morning of December 20, 1975 at 32,000 feet above the Mediterranean when the Tri-Star suddenly went into a steep dive and I shall never knqw why. Most of th e full load of passengers were Americans returning home f or Chri stm as an d sIeepmg un til ' n 1 the abruptness of the descent l)-~~ I ~_. • • shook th em wide a wa ke. The pl ane had taken off from ]edda h in Sa ud i Arabia three hours behi nd schedu le because of techn ical tro u ble a nd was on its wa y to London; afte r whatever happened over th e Mediterr anean it landed in France an d was towed a way. My firs t tho ught as th e dive bega n was -that th is wa s the end of wha t had been the. most unpleasant o f my many years In the motorcycle bu sin ess. The year 1975 had sta rted well and th ere wa s a fu ll order book for th e Nort on Inter pol wh ich I had designed four years ea rlier to recoverthe Police a nd Defen se Force business wh ich h ad been lost by th e Tri u m p h Ia ctory. T he birth o f the new mod el ha d not been easy. obstr uc ted by some o f the o p p o rt u n ist typ es who had jumped o n th e bandwagon when the Manganese Bronze grou p of fin ance com pa nies too k over th e failed Associa ted Mo torcycles Company, which had ea rlier acq u ired th e ailing Norton Motors business. In 1969 I had joined the Norton Villier s co m pa ny with a d irective to crea te a police versio n of th e recen tly: introduced Norton Commando. but for the fir st yea r I was fully involved in helping to clear th e large stoc k o f o bso lete Mat chless a nd Norton models fro m th e o ld factory in London . It was J anuary 1970 befo re I wa s a ble to start ser ious work on building a protot ype of th e Poli ce Com ma ndo, and with th e help o f o ne mech anic th e project began in a wartime ai rcra ft ha nga r in H ampshire. He went h om e a t 6:00 p.m. a nd for man y n ights I worked on in the freezing con d itio ns o f that unheat ed building. By February th e ma chine was o n th e ro ad a n d I began many miles of riding to police forces a ro u nd En gland. The first order came from Sussex County Police for 24 machines which had to be delivered by th e end o f March or there was no deal. My hopes of using th e assem bly line a t the new factory in Andover were qu ickl y shattered . Production of sta n da rd Commandos co u ld not be int errupted. I was told. and if I wanted police models I would have to make them somewhere else. In one corner of the buil ding. with one helper, I built the 24 and it was the last day of March when I trailed the last two from Andover to the p ol ice headquart ers at Lewes near Brigh ton . By th e en d o f the year man y Interpol s were in fleet service with U K Po lice for ces a nd I had finally been