HYBRID VIGOUR
How do you assess a collection of motorcycle parts which individually range from mediocre to merely acceptable, but when gathered together become a really memorable motorcycle? Enter the Matchless/ Norton hybrids produced by Associated Motorcycles (AMC) from 1963 until the company finally collapsed in 1966. For those ardent students of history, production of the specials continued for another two, or maybe even three years, under the ownership of Manganese Bronze Holdings.
The specials went under the not too snappy model name of the Matchless G15, although they were also offered as the Norton N15 CS. It’s a confusing story but a wonderfully transparent window on the last days of the British motorcycle industry. The core of the problem was that by 1963, AMC was on its last legs. Forget drinking at the bar of the Last Chance Saloon. AMC would have been grateful to quench its fiscal thirst in the horse trough outside the establishment.
Desperate measures were required and one of these was to close the Norton factory, which was a slum building located in Birmingham, 115 miles away from AMC’s London headquarters. Norton had reached an agreement to relocate to a new, more modern factory in Birmingham but AMC vetoed the move and instead insisted that the funding be used to keep the ailing company alive at its Plumstead head office.
Only one member of the Norton staff was moved south. This was the chief storeman who was the only one who could identify the boxes of Norton parts which arrived, unlabelled, at AMC. There were only two parts of Norton of any value. The first was the iconic Norton featherbed frame. The other was the 750cc Atlas engine. Although originally designed for the single cylinder Manx race engine, the featherbed worked well as a road bike chassis and was well liked by the fast dwindling number of Norton customers – and these were diminishing almost by the hour in 1963.
As for the Atlas engine, this was the bored and stroked grandson of Bert Hopwood’s 497cc Model 7 motor, which he drew in 1947. I’m not much of a fan of Hopwood
