DIFFERENT STROKES

When I was looking for my latest Norton Commando seven years ago, my better half asked if it would make a good investment. Not really, I said. Most people who ever lusted after one probably had one by now. And then you have to kick-start the blessed things – hardly likely to boost demand.

No, if I was buying a second bike as an investment, I said, I’d buy a Ducati identical to the one I already owned. They were worth nothing at the time, changing hands for as little as $3000. I’d paid more than four times that for mine, second-hand, almost 20 years earlier, and I knew they were a better thing than that.

I bought another Norton anyway, my fourth, not