Featured In the October 2023 issue of Roadracing World:
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was part of a small design and development team working on a new Wankel rotary engine- powered Norton, but actually it was 47 years ago!
The bike was to have an air-cooled Wankel twin-rotor engine and monocoque-style steel frame. By 1980 the bike was still not in production and I emigrated to the USA; 12 years later I read that a Wankel-powered Norton racer had won the Isle of Man Senior TT, the first time a Norton had won the race since 1961!
“Historic Racebike Illustrations: 1992 Norton NRS588,” by Mick Ofield
In 1982 Norton produced a batch of air-cooled rotary bikes for police use, followed up in 1987 by a run of regular street bikes. Norton hired Brian Crighton as service manager, and he quickly realized the rotary would have great potential as a race engine. Management was not convinced but eventually allowed Brian to work in his own time with a police bike test mule. The rest, as they say, is history—and historic. Read the details in the latest issue of Roadracing World!
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