VOL. 51 ISSUE 20 MAY 20, 2014 P69
ing production down to 50 units
only, because they're being in-
tegrated into our 961 Comman-
do build plan on the basis of a
couple of bikes a week, since we
don't think it's fair to unduly de-
lay meeting backed-up orders for
the Commando by building them
all in one batch."
The Domiracer 961 represents
a café racer for the modern era,
an ultra-minimalist latter day hom-
age to Norton's first parallel-twin
GP racer of the same name,
which finished third in the 1961
Senior TT on its racing debut in
the hands of Aussie Tom Phillis.
As such, it's in every way a
stripped-out racer with lights,
even down to the twin open
megaphone exhausts being
completely unsilenced, and the
only instrument is a tachometer.
"This is a styling exercise that
just happened to strike a chord
with a lot of people," says its
creator Simon Skinner. "It's not
meant to be a retro bike, be-
cause it now has a monoshock
rear end where the stock Com-
mando has twin shocks, and the
mixture of old and new is very de-
liberate. Trying to get the balance
right in doing this was very impor-
tant, and quite a challenge. We
wanted to give it the bulldog look,
with plenty of aggressive attitude
by having the front pushed down
and the rear lifted, to create a
butch-looking stance. I've been
playing around with this model on
and off since mid-2011, so I knew
what I wanted, and having other
people at Norton offering sug-
gestions on how to achieve that,
has helped produce something
I'm very pleased with."
The street-legal kit comprises
a pair of mirrors, speedometer,
ignition key, Euro 3 legal silenc-
ers, a license plate hanger and
rear light, but only two of the four
bikes completed at the time of my
visit had been supplied with this.
"Obviously, it does compro-
mise the look if it's installed,"
says Skinner, "so some custom-
ers will make do without it, one
way or the other."
To create what, in spite of his
insistence that it's not a retro
bike, is indubitably a modern-day
version of the Domiracers that
flew the Norton flag in Swingin'
Sixties street dust-ups at the Ace
Café, the Busy Bee and the like,
Skinner has designed a revised
version of the stock Comman-
do's chrome-moly tubular steel
duplex cradle frame, still with a
fabricated backbone doubling as
the oil tank for the dry-sump OHV
pushrod motor - but with strong
overtones of the original Domi-
racer's cut-down Manx Feather-
bed frame.
The frame is made in house at
Norton by the skilled craftsmen
who previously plied their trade
at chassis specialists Spondon
– prior to Garner completing his
acquisition of the firm, and mov-
ing it to Donington Hall.
While retaining the same steer-
ing geometry, with the black-an-
odized Öhlins 43mm fork set at
a 24.5-degree rake with 99mm
of trail, the Domiracer's front end
sees the fork legs now carried in
trick aluminum triple clamps that
are CNC-milled in house at Nor-
ton from solid billets via 3D CAD
and 5-axis machining programs,
then hand-finished.
The fork assembly is just one
of several such delectable parts
on the bike, with the brake levers,
headlamp surround, heel plates,
