Classic Test: 1987 Norton Classic

If you can find one, the Classic represents a great alternative to the Commando…

- Roland Brown

Norton is going from strength to strength at the moment, selling all the Commandos it can produce at its glamorous Donington Hall base, and stunning Motorcycle Live show-goers with the sleek prototypes of its 200bhp V4 SS and RR superbikes. The future looks bright, the problems of the past are almost forgotten, and the launch of the rotary-engined Classic in 1987 seems like an irrelevant footnote in the famous old marque’s history.

But riding the Classic away from the former factory at Shenstone, to start a scoop test of the newgeneration Norton back in 1987, remains one of the highlights of my career – a thrilling moment that is still vivid in my mind all these years later. Following more than 10 years in development, the rotary roadster was finally ready. The British bike industry was fighting back after decades of decline, which included the demise of old rivals including Triumph and BSA.

As I rode through the factory gates, I half expected a worker to leap out shouting, “Stop, it’s all a mistake – of course the new bike is not ready yet!” But nobody stopped me, and I had a great day aboard the Classic. It was quick, handled well and ran reliably. I rode back through the gates that evening impressed with a machine that looked set to lead a successful return to bike production for Norton, which had ceased building its Commando parallel twins 10 years earlier.

One of the ironies of the Classic was that in many ways it was outdated even when new. That first test took place in 1987, but the bike’s origins were way back in the previous decade. Norton had begun development of the rotary-engined machine as early as 1974, and an early prototype featured in a magazine article the following year, alongside a test of Suzuki’s rotary-engined RE5, which was destined to be a short-lived failure.