Another fantasy project

Some of us are olde enough to remember other fantasy projects such as......The Nemasis......The Cosworth......The double overhead cam 800cc Norton lump AMC played with...........

The Cosworth went on to being quite a capable race bike, in the hands of the Quantel crowd.
Too little too late of course, but shows what if - if capable folks get their hands on em...

Love him, or hate him. The one thing you have to admire Garner for is his ability to make up a good story and manipulate the press!

This is nothing more than an idea mixed with some wishful thinking. It may happen, it may not. There have been many wishfully thought project ideas before that came to naught. Personally, I struggle to see how Garner could finance such a project.

Garner is the opposite of Bloor. Bloor kept very quite for a long time whilst actually getting on with some proper hard graft and spending some proper money. He built up a proper team of proper engineers and built some proper prototype bikes... THEN he got the press hooked...

I may have over used the word 'proper' here ... but you get the idea ...!

Might i suggest that Rohan invest in Mr Peter Williams book 'Designed to Race' and read his comments regarding the Cosworth project, as I understood it the engine was intended for future road bike production use.
I am lucky enough to know a few ex NVT gentlemen one of whom rode it at the time and he told me that its power characteristics were totally unsuitable for a road bike.
So with a lot of hard work and very probably spending a lot of serious dosh someone got one going well on the track...clearly some people have very expensive hobbies and can afford them!!.

Your words suggested the Cosworth was included in these 'fantasy' projects.
The fact it went on to be a successful race bike would rather totally negate this line of discussion,
road bike suitability notwithstanding.

Those gentlemen probably should go take a ride on the new supercharged Kwikasakis,
the sales bumff arrived in my mailbox the other day,
with 300+ bhp on tap we can't wait to hear what their pronouncement would be on those !!

I wonder about the wisdom in building street bikes then moving up to building a race bike. It might always have been better to concentrate on building a good race bike, then detune it as a prototype road use. I know the Norton Manx was the result of continual improvement, however it might have been better to pool resources and pick the brains of a number of competent racers to get the design concept for a racing machine. With the Manx, it did not really become exceptional until Geoff Duke and McCandless brothers got involved. I suspect that a lot of MotoGP development is diverted to accommodate the riders coming up.

Nortons spent the cash and had a number of full blown race bikes designed over the years - mostly fours - and then didn't proceed with them,
for various reasons. Also that laydown unit construction manx in the early 1950s, and again didn't proceed.

The (traditional) manx diverged from the road bikes by the mid 1930s, and then had a life of another 25 years,
so its difficult to claim that is shared ANYTHING with the road bikes whatsoever, for a large part of its lifespan.

But as we have noted here before, H*ndas canteen probably operates with a (considerably) larger budget than Nortons race shop did per year,
so 'shoestring' operation, or 2 men in a van phrases come to mind. Bearing that in mind, the success of this operation was considerable.....

But yes, designing for race or designing for road are 2 quite almost opposite aims, and never the twain shall meet. ?