Hi all, obviously anyone reading this is a Norton fan, if not a Norton tragic. It is reasonable that we recognise if not eulogise the virtues of bikes. We recall past glories, ‘As old men, we remember with advantage those feats we once performed on our Nortons’ (apologies to Bill Shakespeare) and like football fans, we defend our chosen brand with tribal ferocity. However, no matter how fervently we try to convince ourselves that our brilliant bikes are ‘alive’, nurtured into life by the artisans of Andover, the sad fact remains that through malice, greed, neglect, shortsightedness, history and world economic circumstances they were absolutely outclassed by Honda and other Japanese manufacturers. I can hear the howls of rage arising from that outrageous statement. How can I say that they were ‘outclassed’, yet even as an avid Norton owner since my youth I stand by that statement. Of course Nortons are superior to Honda Fours in many ways but that fact wouldn’t have worried the captains of Honda one iota. They designed and built a fast, reliable, well equipped large bike at a competitive price. It captured both the imagination and sales choice of thousands of people who never would have dreamed of owning a Norton (or Triumph or BSA). People stopped and ogled a 750/4 who wouldn’t of given a Commando a second glance. Within half a decade Norton was in penury and Honda a household name. The fact that Honda engineers produced a bike that we in hindsight see as somewhat bland, a little indifferent in handling and lacking the finess of a well fettled Norton is irrelevant, they built a bike to be bought by the masses and some years down the track, they bought another. Even the term ‘well fettled’ so often used on Pommie bikes provides us with everything we need to know about their demise. Hondas didn’t need to be fettled, they just worked as designed straight out of the crate. So, what to make of this acerbic diatribe? We love our bikes, we know that they were actually faster and handled better than the big Honda. They possibly even provide more ‘smiles per mile’ with their stonking performance and featherweight handling, they are durable and long lasting in the long term even if unreliable, leaky and frustrating in the short term. They provide fertile ground for us few diehards to eulogise their virtues. We see their lines as minimalist, their engine classes as classic beauty despite the fact that in the early seventies most potential buyers just saw them as yesterday’s technology. But here’s the rub, no matter which way you look at it they are inferior their contemporary Japanese rivals in the way that counts, that is economic success. What we can say about our bikes is this; they are the ultimate expression of an old design, incrementally improved in a thousand ways by experts who had their hands tied. They were under the constraints of a management who refused to allow innovation and generational change, who, by parsimoniously holding the purse strings insisted that what was cutting edge half a century earlier was fit for purpose in the seventies. I could not conclude this rant without mentioning that Britain, whilst wallowing in archaic production methods, staved of a capital after the misfortune of winning two world wars was on the cutting edge of social change. As it had been so often before, it was leading the way on reforming society, providing social services undreamed of in other countries and being the harbinger of the modern western socially responsible society. Unfortunately, on the factory floor these noble causes were reduced to industrial unrest, strikes, distrust and massive inefficiencies. Just some random thoughts. Alan
