Excess all areas?

Torque, as they used to say, wins races, which might not quite be true these days, but it makes a much more relaxing ride. That’s what Norton has gone for with the new Manx, although you can take it to the bank that this is still a very quick machine.

With its physically tiny 72-degree, 1.2-litre V4 engine producing 206bhp and an all-up weight of 203kg, the power-to-weight ratio is 1014bhp per tonne. Stick that in your supercar swap cards and weep. And it’s all transmitted through the minuscule contact patch of a Pirelli 200/55/17 rear tyre on the end of an infeasibly long swing arm with, depending on how much you have spent, a semi-active monoshock Marzocchi spring/damper unit and front forks.

At the launch of the Manx R, Gillen was adamant that the new machine would have ‘one of the most advanced electronic platforms in production today, with lean-angle sensing traction control, wheelie control, launch control, cruise control that adapts when you’re going through the corners on a highway – all that’s included as stock,’ he told Australia’s Motor Cycle magazine.

Not forgetting the brakes, either – Brembo’s most advanced calipers and Bosch’s latest anti-lock make for some considerable stopping.

I have to confess, the prospect of riding this thing is not a little unnerving. I look around for something else to do, another coffee, perhaps, or somewhere to lose my breakfast…

It’s here I should point out that while you might not ride a motorcycle, we know even fewer of you aspire to own one of these beasts, and we understand. We’re here to keep you on point, making sure you are in the know. And also because this is an important story, not just about a rarefied breed of exotic machine, but also because recent Norton history has a lot to tell us about meeting the industrial challenge of the Chinese, about multi-national companies behaving decently towards their customers and about endeavour, skill and industrial engineering jobs in Britain today.

And while ‘The Voice’ at Ti’s underground HQ instructed me specifically not to make this into an industry story, it’s difficult to avoid the turmoil through which Norton has been in the last few decades, not exclusively but a lot to do with the purchase of the company by Stuart Garner in 2008. Since then, there have been a catalogue of woes: undeveloped and unreliable motorcycles, unpaid taxes and accusations of fraud, disappearing pensions, broken promises and undelivered machines.

‘A complete shit show?’ I suggest to Gillen.

‘I wouldn’t put it that charitably,’ he replied, one eyebrow cocked, Roger Moore style.

Indian giant TVS must have wondered what on earth it had bought for its £16 million in 2020; but Indian companies, as we’ve seen with the Tata takeover of JLR from Ford in June 2008, have strong stomachs.

You might be surprised to learn that TVS is the world’s third-largest motorcycle manufacturer, it’s based in Chennai, India. Some of you might have seen Richard Hammond riding a brand-new £800 TVS Star HLX E5 100cc single pot motorcycle for the finale of the second series of Grand Tour ‘Feed The World,’ set in Mozambique. He bought it in a supermarket…

‘You know that’ll never work again,’ says Jeremy Clarkson, when Hammond drops it once again into an impossibly deep muddy puddle drowning the machine completely, followed by ‘no way,’ after it throws a load of mud out of the exhaust and sparks up, ready for business.

But it isn’t just tough old commuter machines for the developing world that emerge from TVS’s sprawling industrial complex. It has sales of three million a year, delivers a range of well-received high-performance machines as well as scooters, builds the current Norton Atlas adventure bike and has a creditable history in racing and rallying.

With the success of Indian-owned Royal Enfield in Europe and the BSA marque being owned by a subsidiary of the Mahindra Group, it’s perhaps understandable that Norton was regarded as a prize, if not a particularly rich one as it turned out.

For TVS has dug deep, investing over £200 million, moving Norton out of its Donington Park factory and into a new factory based in a former John Lewis Partnership warehouse in Solihull. It honoured commitments to those abandoned customers, fixing and re-engineering the problematic tubular steel-framed Commando 961, turning it into a largely reliable and highly desirable machine. It developed the Atlas adventure bike and then started development of an all-new cast-alloy framed replacement for the so-so V4 SS/RR and V4 S4 tubular-framed superbikes.

As for Norton, well, it was first formed in 1898 making ‘fittings and parts for the two-wheel trade’, and was up and running with its own machines by 1902, its own engines by 1908.

‘What is, really is, Norton?’ asks Simon Skinner, Norton’s head of design, rhetorically. ‘If you go back, it’s been high-tech, rapidly-developing innovation, racing – an out-and-out, up-to-the-minute motorcycle manufacturer.’

Well on occasion, Simon – and while no one can take away 94 TT wins or the marque’s charisma – anyone who has owned a leaking, wheezing, seizing Commando might be tempted to differ. The Big 4, the Dominator, the 500T, the military Model 16 H and many others have stood out over the years, however. ‘Unapproachable Norton’ the adverts used to say, but they did approach the amazing Manx.

For those unfamiliar with Norton’s McCandless-framed, off-the-peg Manx racer, I’d refer you to Joana’s excellent ride out on just such a model on Ti.

There were few riders who could race this sweet-handling machine to its absolute limit. Those who could were among the sport’s greatest – Geoff Duke, Derek Minter, Ray Amm, John Surtees, Phil Read and Mike Hailwood, who gave the Norton its last Senior TT victory on the Isle of Man in 1961. And as Jo points out, the legend lives on.

The last Manx rolled out of Norton’s Bracebridge factory in 1963, by which time the company had been owned by Associated Motor Cycles for a decade. This was the swansong of the once-mighty British motorcycle industry. AMC collapsed in 1966, its successor Norton Villiers went into liquidation in 1974. This was followed by an embarrassing spectacle of government-supported dead ducks as the entire industry was overrun by Japanese rivals. Norton was used and abused, with intellectual property rights spread across the globe. As for the rest of the motorcycle industry, these days it’s the Chinese we’re all concerned about.

My knowledgeable and well-connected friend doesn’t give Norton a chance. ‘Look at the Chinese,’ he said. ‘They can amortise the development costs across 100,000 bikes. No one knows who Norton is, and their cost base must be massive’.

‘We’ve seen it before of course,’ says Gillen, who is originally from Buffalo, New York State and whose family ran a successful motorcycle dealership, selling British motorcycles in their pomp.

‘There were the British, which got run over by the Japanese, then the Europeans fought back and now there’s the Chinese.’

He is, however, adamant that under TVS, Norton is here to stay (besides, no-one tools up to make 100,000 hyperbikes – they’re barely making 250 a year). A guided factory tour is enough to show the seriousness of the endeavour. They seem like good people and nothing has been left to chance.  Manx frames are cast aluminium, hand welded in a jig on a TIG machine, then double checked before meticulous assembly with full traceability of each component, even down to the mine which supplied the aluminium. It’s state of the art but with a hand-built authenticity.

And the machine is gorgeous, with its own bespoke lighting and shape. ‘Engineers are great problem solvers,’ says Skinner, ‘when I asked them for no holes in the coachwork and no visible fasteners, they just went ahead and achieved it.’

It’s time to climb on. The V4 clatters into life sounding like a shaken cereal box with the Sugar Puffs replaced by titanium bolts. Your ears receive the noise differently, too, since the exhaust exits under the engine. ‘We didn’t want a bit of pipe sticking out the back,’ says Skinner.

Blip the twist grip and the engine doesn’t whizz up the digital bar graph on the touch screen like a racer, just clatters purposefully up and down. It still doesn’t do much for my nerves.

With no screen and a knees-in-your-ears riding position, this feels extreme; as extreme as those circus folk who contort themselves into hat boxes. On the plus side, it means you can see everything, on the minus, you feel you might fall over the front when you touch the brakes. Oh and bless me, there’s even a pillion, although I’ve seen more material on a pad for a crutch – you’d have to love the rider very much.

The clutch is light, but difficult to find a biting point and you have to concentrate manoeuvring round the car park. Best not drop it.

Rake or castor is the angle of the steering head on a motorcycle, determining how relaxed the machine feels versus how quick it is to turn. Trail is the distance between where the steering axis hits the ground and the contact patch. More trail adds stability, less adds agility at the expense of twitchiness.

Here I’d argue both are at the extremes of acceptability for a road bike and if you add the Manx R’s short wheelbase, the result is a machine which feels more eager than a spaniel pup to find its first corner.

Out of Solihull and gaining confidence, you barely need to turn the bars to complete a circuit of a roundabout, whether you want to or not.

The gear and brake levers are Lilliputian controls demanding the ball of your foot on the tiny pegs. Gently now.

Half an hour of photographs gives more confidence and new respect for the fantastically powerful brakes, but also the progression and sensitivity of the lever.

Then we’re out on the road with Norton’s Neil Winn setting the pace and Gillen’s words coming back with a vengeance. Barely a twitch of the throttle gets you to and beyond the speed limit. You need to look to the far distance, the machine disappearing from view underneath you, leaving a sensation of flying a broom stick, inches from the ground. Is this how Icarus felt? There is certainly a temptation to fly too close to the sun. It’s so responsive, just a thought has your body moving through space and time into a turn and then the cackling V4 jets you out again. Life on the Manx R is a series of corners, such is the lack of time between them. And the ride provides respectable comfort even over broken surfaces. Time for Sport mode, then…

Now the ride stiffens, the throttle becomes more instant and, boy, do you know that mild-mannered Dr Jekyll has been at his special sauce again. Gillen says he didn’t want the traction control to be too obvious, but it is when the rear tyre hits gravel on the exit to a corner and the electronics collect things up before I’ve time to react.

But those brakes and basic good manners enable your brain to catch up. After 40 minutes of country roads it feels wondrous, exhausting and as exciting as an old man would want it.

Was it hard to hand it back? Not really, I’ve huge admiration for the machine, but as one very experienced rider said to me: ‘It’s lovely to thrash a bike close to its capabilities, but you can’t do that with 200bhp’.

It’s a superlative machine, but one that will always challenge your abilities not its own. A beautiful thing to own, but so single-minded it brings an enormous sense of responsibility, not to mention one’s sense of self preservation.

On the ride home my Honda VFR sports tourer, (V4, 104bhp and 150mph), felt like a comfortable old dray horse. I stopped at my local for a pint and, at the thought of the Norton, I noticed a slight tremor in my fingers.

And before you go and tick all the options on a Manx R order form, a word to the wise. Last year’s UK deaths and seriously-injured figures for powered two wheelers were up for the second year, to a grim 6096 for both categories. Motorcyclists are at most risk: in 2025 they accounted for 25 per cent of road deaths but just one per cent of road traffic. What’s more, motorcyclists are getting older, with an average age between 54 and 57, not far off double what it was in the ’60s.

So, a dilemma, then; this is a beautiful, consummately capable superbike aimed at road use, which will sell to older, wealthier riders, but which is unlikely ever to be used anywhere near full capability. I loved it, but my faster friends have started to come out of superbikes, choosing smaller, easier to manage machines. They found the temptation of a superbike in the garage was becoming almost a goading to go ever faster.

As for my previous Manx experience, well Barry Sheene won of course, holding hands with Wayne Gardner as they took the victory lap. I find it hard to watch the race video these days; he was dead within six months and the world felt an emptier place. As for me, well I wasn’t last and I overtook a couple of rivals. And that’s as good as it gets.

I see my race boots occasionally peeking out of the back of the wardrobe, still bearing the scars of the scraping over the kerbs at Lavant.

And that’s perhaps where they should remain…