NORTON DOMIRACER 961
FIRST RIDE
P68
long as three years ago, and
chose not to take the refund of-
fered as production stalled for
various reasons. But this is now
set to rise steeply from the 10 mo-
torcycles a week currently being
manufactured, says Garner, after
Norton's cash flow improvement
convinced its financial partner
Banco Santander to provide ex-
tra funds to build up the parts
stock, thus allowing production
to be ramped up.
To celebrate this, he's unveiled
the first limited production variant
on the firm's existing air-cooled
parallel-twin theme - the Norton
Domiracer.
"Designing this bike in the
first place was a present to our-
selves," said Garner. "We all ride
motorcycles here and many of
the lads who work at Norton had
their own ideas of what the next
generation version of the 961
Commando platform might be.
After all the disruption of moving
the factory last year, when we got
back on an even keel we thought
it would be good to let each of
them have a say in what such a
bike might be, then ask Simon
Skinner, our head of design, to
draw up a bike based on their
input. Simon did this, built the
result, and then parked it on the
factory floor for two weeks for ev-
eryone to critique it during their
tea breaks. It's a mark of how
open minded he is that several
hundred cups of tea later he pro-
duced a modified version incor-
porating many of their sugges-
tions, and the Domiracer here is
the result."
This exercise in corporate team
building was originally intended
to result in just a one-off show-
bike, but when it was displayed
at the NEC Show last November
the response was overwhelming.
"We realized we had a hit on
our hands," said Garner, "so we
held a function here at the Hall
to show it to our existing cus-
tomers, with the offer to build
50 examples of it as a limited
edition model if there was suf-
ficient demand. We priced it
at 20,000 British pounds plus
tax, with an extra £2,000 British
pounds to make it street-legal in
the UK by adding equipment to
pass an SVA/Single Vehicle Ap-
proval test, and within two weeks
they were all sold, with many of
them going abroad. We're keep-
The Domiracer
was designed by
Simon Skinner
with input from
workers at the
Norton factory
during their tea
breaks.
