Wacky Racers!

For eight successive seasons the world’s first – and so far only – Rotary-engined race bikes swept to serial success on British racetracks, and whether you were a jingoistic Brit, waving a patriotic flag for the rotaries, or doubtful of their legality, you can’t say that they didn’t inject a certain something into the mix.

1987

In this year, Norton development engineer Brian Crighton constructs a 120bhp Spondonframed RC588 Rotary racer weighing just 140 kilos, using an air-cooled twin-rotor engine originally producing 80bhp sourced from a crashed Interpol II police bike. The Interpol II was a model which was the lifeblood of the Shenstone-based Norton concern. The company itself had been purchased in February that year by South African financier Philippe LeRoux and associates for £1.64 million. After the resultant prototype race bike tops 170mph on the MIRA test track in July, LeRoux establishes a fledgling Norton racing department, and test rider Malcolm Heath finishes 3rd on the bike’s Darley Moor race debut, just six weeks after the