Norton might be a famous name in motorcycling but since the rotary-powered F1 disappeared from production 25 years ago it’s never made a road-going superbike. It’s the new 1200 V4.
Of course, the current iteration of Norton, based at Donington, bears little relation but its name with the firm that turned out those old title-winning rotaries. Revived by businessman Stuart Garner in 2008, it’s been churning out small numbers of retro bikes since then, based on Kenny Dreer’s rework of the original Commando engine. Sure, there have been racing appearances at the Isle of Man TT, first with a rotary derived from the old 1990s project and more recently with an Aprilia RSV4-powered racer. But this is the first home-brewed superbike to appear from the company.
While it’s a V4 and clearly shares a similar chassis to the Spondon-framed TT bikes, the engine in the new road-going machine is new. Developed with the help of engineering specialists Ricardo, it’s a 1200cc V4 targeting around 200bhp. That should be easily reached, and since the firm doesn’t plan to race this machine there’s no need to stick to arbitrary 1000cc capacity limits.
As can be seen in the teaser video, there’s a huge amount of carbon fibre on the bike. Everything from the tank to the fairing and even the wheels are made of the stuff. So it should be light. There will also be a slightly cheaper version without the carbon wheels, but even in its lowest spec the new 1200 V4 is set to be an expensive, limited edition machine priced at around twice as much as a typical Japanese four-cylinder superbike. The all-carbon, limited-edition version will be more expensive still. From the video it’s clear the the money also buys a lot of top-end Ohlins and Brembo kit.
However, given the investment involved in creating a Euro4-legal V4 engine, it’s likely that the same power plant will appear in more machines once the limited initial run of superbikes has been completed.
The bike is set to make its first public appearance at the Motorcycle Live show in Birmingham next month.
