It was 50 years ago this year, in June 1973, when one of the benchmark road racers of the modern era scored its most illustrious victory, when the John Player Norton team’s rider/engineer Peter Williams won the Formula 750 TT race in the Isle of Man on the innovative, mould-breaking JPN Monocoque.
This race-winning motorcycle was also a two-wheeled anachronism, thanks to its archaic air-cooled pushrod twin motor and separate gearbox complete with triplex primary chain being housed in the most sophisticated and avant-garde motorcycle chassis design that the world had yet seen, echoing Britain’s Formula 1 GP supremacy via Lotus, Cooper and Brabham.
That bike was the John Player Norton Monocoque, and though only three such motorcycles were ever built (plus a fourth prototype chassis), all of which competed for just a single race season in 1973, its unlikely success against much more powerful Japanese two-stroke opposition has earned the JPN Monocoque legendary status as one of the standout racers of the modem era. It was the creative masterpiece of the man who conceived, developed and rode it to so many victories in its single year of competition, culminating in his first and only TT win: the late Peter Williams, who passed away in December 2020, aged 81.
Until relatively recently, only two of the four John Player
