RESEARCHING OBSCURE MOTORCYCLES IS OFTEN considerably entertaining. In the case of a prototype bike, it can also be seriously frustrating – and when all that remains of the original factory project is an engine, maybe a gearbox, and a frame to hold them, the best we can hope to find is an approximation of what the factory actually built. Or indeed intended to build, because some experimental engines appear to have run only on a testbed in the factory.
Until, of course, a better, more enthusiastic researcher supplies a photograph of a complete bike running and being ridden on the road. That can be a little sobering.
Things are a little different when the factory went as far as actually tooling up for production – which is a seriously scarily expansive process – and even includes their proud new models in their bright new catalogue. And then… the model gets canned, and all the effort, resource and, well, money involved in its development is thrown away. If we all agree that this is a little frustrating for a researcher a half-century later, then think of those actually involved.
A fellow enthusiast of all things Norton rotary sent a smudgy image of a prototype of that most excellent machine being ridden on trade plates back in the early 1970s. I’d seen it before, along with a couple of statics of what I thought was the
