A fine vintage

Is there a more handsome 1920s motorcycle than the flat-tank Model 18 Norton? Well, I’d put forward the case that quite possibly there’s not – though I am biased. We’ll come to that later.

In many ways it represents the ultimate extension of the first, standardised motorcycle design, so an engine fitted in what is still identifiably a bicycle frame, forks which are still – just about – bicycle in their lineage, and the petrol tank between the two top rails of a strengthened bicycle frame. The gearbox is suspended from where the pedal crank would’ve been, with the down tubes prized apart and the engine filling in the space. It is, truly, a motor in a bicycle.

The Model 18 is also a vehicle capable of performance, which meant that it was one of a raft of machines taking the motorcycle out of the realms of quirky oddity, into genuine, cross continental travelling machines – witness Norton’s own attempts with the Model 18