Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

op-of-the-range model is projected as having active suspension of the type already experimented with by WP on the works Aprilia GP bikes three years ago, with front and rear suspension linked via the engine-management system to rpm and throttle openings with the objective of improving grip, but here c;Ieveloped by MCD for the street, as well as the race track. Another idea already experimented with elsewhere is the 360= rim brake disc bolted firmly to the front wheel of the Nemesis (i.e., not floating). AP-Lockheed (who is believed to hold a worldwide patent governing the motorcycle application of such a design) fitted a metal rim disc more than a decade ago to Rob McElnea's works Suzuki 500cc GP racer, but in extensive tests could not resolve overheating problems. It'll be interesting to see which brake manufacturer MCD will work with to resolve such problems for the street. But whether they do or not, the Norton Nemesis is replete with technical innovation, which together with its projected performance (and cli;limed horsepower' figures are 'completely in line with expectations for a 1500cc V-eight, say engineering experts), will help justify the nearly $50,000 price tag that the A model is likely to carry (around $40,000 for the base-model bike). But the Norton lineup doesn't end there. Also on display at the Dorchester launch was a liquid-cooled four-cylinder slant-block 16-valve 750cc engine using the same internal dimensions and overall design as one half of the N emesis V-eight, which Melling says will form the basis of a 750cc Manx Norton superbike, and which shares many components - such as a cylinder head etc. - with the Nemesis. It's b~lieved Melling originally designed the Manx engine' for the abortive (well, rebadged) March superbike, for which former March Britain manager Les McTaggart (now departed) had produced a carbon-fiber chassis already shown publicly 18 months ago, clothed with specially designed styling by John Keogh, which has also been discarded. Two versions of the 750cc Manx Nortdn will.be produced, says Melling: a triple-ignition/12-plug racer delivering, a claimed 175 bhp at 16,000 rpm (with pwjected use of Fl-type pneumatic valve operation), and a single~plug v.alve-spring road version that MCD 5ays will offer 160 bhp at 15,000 rpm though not, presumably, with air filters, silencers and full street equipment. Either engine will sit in a fabricated twin-spar alloy chassis specially developed by Spondon for the bike, with more conventional suspension, wheels and brakes than the Nemesis, and a target weight of 422 pounds. Next comes another V-eight, this time a cruiser to be known as the Commando (a choice of name unlikely to please diehard Norton enthusiasts!) targeted to cost around $30,000 and which Melling says will be "a Chevy on two wheels - it even burbles like a Chevy at idle speed." This implies that the engine exists and has run, but there was no sign at the launch of a power unit that "has been designed to incorporate the upmost (sic) to satisfy the American custom enthusiast" According to the press handout, this lifj,uid-cooled 1497cc 90-degree V-eight ~~ a completely different design from the Nemesis/Manx format, with 62.5 x 61pun dimensions, push-rod operation via hydraulic lifters of the two valves per cylinder, single-point MCD-MBE fuel injection and a four-speed gearbox, all delivering a claimed 110 bhp at 7000 rpm, with maximum torque of 86, ft.-lb. at 5000 rpm. Projected for this model is a tubular steel frame, but still with 17-inch wheels and the' same avant-garde suspension and brakes as the non-active version of the Nemesis, with 525 pounds the target weight. Don't stop reading yet - there's more! According to Melling, Norto!" is also working on a range of 600cc four-stroke singles to be known as the Interna tional (Norton's historic name for the roadgoing versions of the single-cylinder Manx GP racer), led by a desmodromic race replica targeted to produce 75 bhp in race guise at 11,400 rpm, and around 65 bhp in street form. This com pares with the 75 bhp currently delivered by a good 572cc Ducati Supermono, so seems realistic, and ¥elling says Norton is already planning a one-make race series for the International singles in Britain next year. This, he says, will spawn similar championships in the United States, Japan and Australia, with the best placed riders in each series contesting an end-of-season world championship in the United States. The Norton desmo single would then, he says, lead to a less powerful 52bhp roadster model with a valve-spring version of the engine, as well as an enduro counterpart completing the four-model single-cylinder range, a competition version 'of which could also be used in a Supermotard series: Norton and Donington Park management have already, says Melling, been in discussion about the construction of a new track catering for such events. To create this huge range of models (as well as the 600cc four-cylinder supersport contender that Melling says Norton is planning), a newly formed company called Norton Motors International has been created, based not in Great Britain but in the States - in Minneapolis, Minnesota. . NMI has been formed by merging Minneapolis-based March Motors Inter, national with Norton Motorycles Ltd., which until five years ago produced rotary-engined Nortons at its Shenstone factory in England. March, formerly a leading British manufacturer of Formula One and CART racing cars, which since its acquisition by American financiers' in 1995 had been focused on building a range of motorcycles headed by a 750cc four-cylinder superbike, had commissioned British design consultant AI Melling's MCD concern to develop such an engine for this bike, which will now form the basis of the new 750cc Manx Norton. This is thanks to an agreement reached with the third party (besides March and MCD) to the creation of Norton International, namely the Canadian Aquilini property-investment group based in Vancouver, which acquired the remnants of the Norton company almost by accident when an associate of Aquilini's, Nelson Skalbania, allegedly used an Aquilini loan to buy the troubled Norton company, on which he then defaulted. And to complete a storyline worthy of a paperback thriller, it's worth remembering that' the only reason Skalbania was able to buy the defunct Norton company in the first place was because of the frauds perpetrated by South African financier and former Norton boss Philippe LeRoux and his cronies, which ran the company into the' ground and for which LeRoux was found guilty and fined a paltry $25,000 in February this year, after a plea bargain which swept the Norton Motorcy~ cles Ltd. crumbs under the table! These three parties have therefore each brought a very different ingredient to the born-again Norton company's table. March brings finance, much of it raised via a 1996 share offer to private, investors, mainly in the States - $10 million of which is reported to have been invested in development work to d'1-te as well as the corporate structure on which the new cOn;lpany is founded, in recognition of which Match chairman Joe Novogratz will serve as co-chairman of NMI. Teaming up with him in that role is Luigi Aquilini, boss of the eponymous Canadian company that is contributing the rights to the Norton name in Great Britain, Canada and the United States (having reacquiree those for the latter country from American investor Pakie Plastino, to whom ·they had been brokered),' as well as providing the currently run-down Norton factory in Shenstone, north of Birmingham, where just four employees presently work handling spare parts for the rotary engine, out of the 140 employed at the height of motorcycle production back in 1989. MCD's AI Melling is charged with the task of delivering the product, in the form of the breathtaking range of exciting new bikes announced at the Dorchester launch, which betray him as a bigtime bike addict - for the proposed Norton range represents a wish list of dream bikes that any half-serious sportbike enthusiast would covet. But there's the rub. As attractive as the promised feast of two-wheeled superlatives may be on paper, can Melling, and Norton, deliver any (all?) of these bikes to the marketplace - and how soon? Can this phenomenally bold, outrageously attractive but arguably overambitious game plan to revive the Norton name in the most high-profile way imaginable actually be put into operation, delivering the promised range of technology-rich bikes to customers around the world as fast as NMI executives insist it will happen? "We aim to start production (of the Nemesis) by October this year," says Melling - yet with the best will in the world, given the avant-garde complexity of the entire motorcycle, engine and chassis both, this seems hopelessly optimistic. Even Cagiva, with greater resources and more experience of series production than NMI, has been hard put to start limited, hand-made production of the MV Agusta F4 by this spring, six months after the bike's debut in Milan and that's with a four-cylinder engine that's been dyno-developed over the past eight years, and road-tested for the last six! The prototype Nemesis V-eight may be up and running by the end of the year - but as Triumph's John Bloor knows better than anyone, it took tens (Above left) March chairman Joe Novograti (left) will serve as co-chairman of Norton Motors International, Myron Calof (right) is executive vice president of the Aquilini Investment Group, owners of the remnants of the Norton company, and AI Melling heads up Melling ConSUltancy Design. Together, their respective companies make up NMI. (Above) Norton also says that it will produce a 175-hp, liquid-cooled, 750cc inline four to be used in a bike badged as a Manx. of millions of British pounds of his own money, a large team of dedicated development engineers, and six years to raise Triumph from the dead. Do Melling & Co. have the same resources - and time? Perhaps not. There was an irresistible feeling at the Dorchester launch that this was not so much a press conference (there were only a handful of hacks in attendance) as a public-relations exercise aimed a t massaging the egos and checkbooks of March investors, as well as the several industry suppliers in attendance on whom Melling is banking to help him get Norton up and running again. And it was noticeable that NMI executives preferred not to address the single biggest shadow hanging over the proceedings - namely that the only country in the world where you can legally ride a motorcycle at 225 mph on the public highway is Germany, and Norton Motors International cannot sell the Nemesis there because it does not own the rights to the Norton trademark in that country, nor essentially in the rest of Europe, which is the world's largest market for sportbikes of the kind they prop

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