Big Norton News
BIG NORTON NEWS
After almost 30 years in limbo, the famed Norton script logo has finally found a good home-in Gladstone, Oregon?!
Yep, that’s where you’ll find Kenny Dreer’s company, Norton America (www.nortonamerica.com), which last February in court-moderated negotiations acquired the North American rights from five co-parties, including a group that had just the week previous announced a rather dubious-looking Harley-clone Norton cruiser, now defunct. Previously, NA had locked up European rights.
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap, the final tab reaching into the millions. “This was a tortured case,” noted one of the judges involved. “Tracing the convoluted path of the marks through dummy companies and shell corporations took an advanced degree in Business Law with a minor in Snake Oil,” noted one observer. “Basically, the marks had been held hostage for the past 25 years.”
But Oreer and his legal team persevered and now can claim rights to the Norton name in Canada, the U.S., England and most of Europe-basically every major market where a neo-Commando might be sold.
While all the legal wrangling played out, NA was quietly in development of its new 952 Commando, powered by a cleansheet, CAD-CAM’ed inclined-Twin that cosmetically pays homage to Norton motors of old, but bristles with such niceties as a NASCAR-spec Chevy V-8 valvetrain. At presstime, a mule motor was up on the dyno, “spinning like a Swiss watch and howling like a banshee,” says Dreer. The goal is 85 rear-wheel horsepower from the pushrod air-cooler, or about twice an old Commando’s output.
The rest of the year is earmarked for testing, the aim being to have 100 “signature series” Commandos on sale in early 2004. -David Edwards
