During the seven years they worked together, the arrangement was that for anything that Rex McCandless – he was the creative genius of the duo, leaving Cromie to run the company – suggested to Norton which worked, he’d be entitled to charge the company £1 per hour on conceiving it, and developing it. But if the idea didn't work, there’d be no payment, so – heads I win, tails you lose. Norton MD Gilbert Smith must have been a masterful negotiator!
Despite having left school in Belfast in 1928 aged 13 with no formal education, by 1939 and the outbreak of WW2 Rex McCandless was assembling Bristol Bombay transporter aircraft at Short Brothers and Harland, nowadays Bombardier. This was a reserved occupation which prevented him being called up, but which still left time for him to play about with motorcycles. Rex began racing his selftuned Triumph Tiger road bike, and in his first ever road race won the 1940 Irish 500cc championship, held at Phoenix Park in Dublin, and he also won the Irish Hillclimb title. This led to a short but successful racing career, in which he was recruited to race for the Norton works team in the 1948 Ulster 350cc GP – his first introduction to the British manufacturer, which led in turn to his working on various development projects with them.
For Rex had become increasingly fascinated with the handling problems he was experiencing on his Triumph racer, and the means of resolving them. In a 1989 interview with Scottish journalist Gordon Small, he explained his preoccupations. "I had noticed that when I removed weight in the shape of a heavy mudguard and a headlight, that the
