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- Nov 20, 2004
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- 20,116
illf8ed said:
I suppose for someone living in the US that's probably not too surprising unless you happen to come across a '72/MkIV Hi-Rider, or as you said a Fastback, as you'd be unlikely to find many standard models, and I would accept that most if not all Roadsters built within the 200976 - 211110 series and sold on the US market would have been Combats as the most common US Commando model seems to have been the Roadster. Probably all Interstates within that series were Combats.
According to the '72 brochure: "COMBAT ENGINE New exciting higher power engine option for the Roadster and Interstate" but nothing there about any Combat Fastback or Hi-Rider option.
So, initially, it would seem Fastbacks were likely to have been built as standard models (there's a silver-barrelled, drum-braked Fastback in the '72 brochure) and there were no Combat Hi-Riders as far as we know, but it seems unlikely that no Hi-Riders would have been built during the 'Combat' period. There would almost certainly have been a few Interpols (one with a with drum brake features in the '72 brochure) however the Interpol specification isn't known and in any case, the actual specification varied according to customer requirements.
http://www.classicbike.biz/Norton/Broch ... ochure.pdf
As we know, '72/MkIV production commenced from about serial 200001, and if Combat production did start at or around 200976*, that suggests there were at least about 975 '72/MkIV models that were not Combats therefore I don't think anyone-even hobot, can emphatically state with any degree of certainty that: "all '72 Commandos were Combats"-and that's without counting any built during the Combat production period, or those post-Combat '72 Commandos that had 32mm carbs, RH5/RH6 cylinder heads, Superblends and disc brakes that hobot conveniently forgets about.
*(200976 is the official number but a few Combats with lower serial numbers are known to exist)
