Norton Model 77
I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE. DESPITE SPENDING four decades or so riding motorcycles, until a few weeks ago I’d never ridden a Norton. Fortunately, this sad omission from my record was solved by James Ward, who offered me a ride on his Norton.
What delight did he have to tempt me? A Featherbed-framed Dominator? An Atlas? Maybe a Commando? Or, heaven forfend, a Manx?
It was, in fact, a Model 77. A what? The Model 77 was that most semi-sensible of things – a 600cc Dominator engine in a straight-forward frame built primarily for sidecar use. James’s example had its chair removed long ago.
“I bought it in 2006,” he says. “It had been the favourite bike of Pat and Sylv Ifold, who were members, like me, of Wells Classic Motorcycle Club. Pat had sadly died, and Sylv was selling off his collection. I got there first and as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to have it. It even had a sprig of heather on it from when they had visited the Isle of Man. I stay in contact with Sylv, and we go for rides on it every so often.
“They’d bought it in the early 1990s and given it some work in the mid-1990s. It’s got the original number plate, which it had lost along the way but was recovered after a bit of a fight with the DVLA. There’s loads of documentation, including a bill of sale from 1961 when it was sold for £61, including details of the finance package.
“Apart from rebuilding the
