VOL. 53 ISSUE 24 JUNE 21, 2016 P85
chased the neighboring Priest
House Hotel, a luxury 42-bed-
room riverside property adja-
cent to the Norton factory built
around an 11th-century Norman
mill tower, thus adding a useful
revenue stream to help capital-
ize the flourishing motorcycle
business expanding next door in
BMI's huge former business HQ,
aided by a 4,000,000-pound
funding grant from the UK Gov-
ernment after a visit to Norton
by Chancellor of the Exchequer,
George Osborne. The reborn
Norton Motorcycles company
has finally shifted into top gear,
and the chance to talk to Stuart
Garner in his Donington Hall of-
fice explained how and why this
has come about.
Eight years on since you
first discussed acquiring
what remained of the Norton
brand, here you are in Doning-
ton Hall, with the former BMI
reservations center behind us
converted into the Norton as-
sembly line. Is Norton finally
re-established for real?
It's going really well, but it's
not easy. But we're moving
ahead really well, and we're
consistently making 15-20 bikes
a week for customers all over
the world. It varies a bit from one
week to another, but that's the
average.
With a global distribu-
tion network, and especially
strong demand from your lat-
est export market, Australia,
