This debate can never come to a conclusion as, to state the obvious, everyone is looking for something different. As a British rider I have a nostalgia for a traditionally British bike cos that's what I grew up with and that's what Dad rode and at one time British bikes were the best in the world on the road and track. So owning a Norton still pleases this subconsciously held fact for me. Wearing my Godtop jacket and Lewis Leathers boots hooks into a desire for the time when life was so much simpler and the future held so much promise.
Customers from other countries will want to buy a British bike because of a desire to buy into the British image and may actually be more demanding that the product is as British as it can be. Interestingly I haven't heard anyone on the forum complain that Norton are using Ohlin suspension instead of a British manufacturer so there is a degree of 'It must be British yet I can accept some compromises'.
If you are buying a 961/Commando then you are buying into an image of a British tradition and it's down to how deep you want to go :- Is the name enough like the AJS badge on the pretty little Chinese café racers or the French built Brough Superior or my Indian built Harley Davidson? Are you happy with a bought-in engine assembled into a British built frame? There is also a degree of, dare I say, bias against certain countries so a 'precision engineered' German engine might be acceptable yet a 'cheap mass produced' engine from the Japanese (who killed our industry) not so. We know that any country is capable of building a quality power unit but again what we're buying into is an image with Norton.
Stuck record time - I draw a parallel with Morgan Sportscars who tried to update their design but their customers overseas wanted a traditional look but were happy to have a BMW/ S&S powerplant as it gave reliability and performance.
So based on the above my gut feeling is that if we could build a traditional looking Commando in Britain using a traditional looking engine from, say, Germany which gave us really excellent performance and reliability then that would satisfy most buyers.
FYI
From my conversations with Norton a few 961 owners were consulted on their experiences with the bike. They then got a third party company to test bikes on the road and track and confirmed the issues which had been raised were true. Unlike the previous regime they admit that there are definitely issues like the rocker bushing and fraying throttle cables which they are fixing. For the latter updated throttle bodies are being produced. A batch of 961s which were built using existing parts were not released and have been standing in the factory until the quality issues have been addressed. Many people have told me that I'm gullible so I suppose I must be but really think New Norton are going in the right direction.
