NWVCMM Presents Kenny Dreer, Norton America

Breaking news, we will be hosting here at the Northwest Vintage car and Motorcycle museum once again an exciting presentation by Kenny Dreer, formerly
"Norton America" also before that "Vintage rebuilders". This will be Kennys third presentation at the museum and the past events were very well attended with standing room only.

This year, with our new exhibit hall we have plenty of room. Please plan to attend. this will be in Feb on the 16th, a Saturday. Ill update soon more details.

The past presentations were Kennys personal history and experience. And his transformation to what eventually became Norton America as well as a lot of the dirty secrets of the motorcycle business, and discussions of other start ups and resurrections such as Henderson, Indian and all those Italian companys.

This presentation will be more centered around the technical aspects of the business, with design, testing, prototypes, setbacks and advances and the costs and time related to do these. Kenny made some jokes we could instead just talk about Garner and "Where are the new Nortons" but this will be a well rounded discussion and im sure the new Nortons will be discussed. but this is a interactive presentation about Norton America and the nuts and bolts of creating a super bike from the ashs,.

Stay tuned kiddys,,, more details soon,. In the interim, consider becoming a member and supporting a world class museum complex. thanks for your support.

Where are you located and how do we get ahold of your organization?
Do you have a link to a website?

rx7171 said:

Where are you located and how do we get ahold of your organization?
Do you have a link to a website?

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Uh, i'm in my office,, screwing around on the internet instead of down in the shop,,,

oh!,, wait, the museum? Sorry, here you go..

The museum is here in Oregon, Just south of Portland, or a little north of Salem. We are RIGHT off exit #263 on Interstate 5 (look for the Pilot Truck stop) take the exit and we are approx 1/4 mile west of the freeway. There is a large sign "Antique Powerland" with a old steam tractor parked next to the sign.
thats the access road to the musuem complex (Usually called "Powerland"). There is a gate which will be open for this event, the complex only opens on a limited basis during the winter, and normal visiting is spring till fall. Please go SLOW on the access road, 5mph.

The complex is currently 14 museums, with more slated in the future. several hundred acres, we have our own railroad, a trolley system, the steam powered sawmill, the Trucking museum, the earth moving equipment museum and so on and so on. We have events every weekend of some sort, and the largest event is the annual "Steam up" which is 2 weeks long at the end of July and early August. Everything gear head related you can imagine from Hit and miss motors powering old Maytag washers (everyone should have a kick start Washing machine) to Army tanks.

This particular event is FREE,, FREE,, FREE,, but we strongly encourage you to make a donation. In addition I will have Norton related merchandise that you can purchase and Kenny will autograph. You can also get your picture taken, your petrol tank signed, etc etc.. Im not sure this time but last event we had a limited amount of color brochures from the old Norton America business for sale you could get and signed (collectors item).


We are a NON PROFIT Museum and run by all volunteers. We have achieved amazing progress in 11 years, And we have a variety of programs and events well worth supporting. Consider joining or perhaps discuss a brick purchase, donate something or volunteer for our many events. (Im always needing vendors and bike show participants for the swap meet and bike show I do every July, Hint hint)

see more at the following websites (hope i get the links right)
<www.nwcarandcycle.org>
<www.antiquepowerland.com>
you should be able to surf the other museums websites that way, as well as you can check out our page for the Car and MC museum as well as read past newsletters, the new issue just came out, not sure its up on the website yet.
Also, the entre complex is known as Antique Powerland, or "Powerland" but each museum is run independantly, but we all work together. In addition we have a long list of clubs who are also members such as the Orphan car club, the Ford V8 club, the chevrolet club, the "Steam fiends", Branch 15 Antique equipment club, etc etc.
Tell them Doug the Internet annoyance sent you

Knowing Kenny, this is going to be great entertainment, and highly educational for the foolish souls who fancy to invest in a motorcycle upstart/restart!

I envy those who can make it to the talk.

Joe Seifert/Andover Norton

Maybe someone can videotape the talk so we can all enjoy it? Just throwing it out there...

Dunno - maybe sell copies to fund some new museum projects?

Russ

batrider said:

Maybe someone can videotape the talk so we can all enjoy it? Just throwing it out there...

Dunno - maybe sell copies to fund some new museum projects?

Russ

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We HAVE taped the previous talks with Kenny, as well as many of our other seminars and tech discussions, seems to me the only one I dont think we did was when Evan Wilcox did the alloy tank class and seminar..(Evan did a lot of custom bodywork for Kenny back in the day, My buddy Gary, aka "Mr Linky" got Evan started in the alloy body work business, and Linky was kennys original partner and funded the start of Vintage rebuilders)

Any rate, this is a topic we have discussed many times. Right now those tapes are museum assets and can be used for our educational programs as we also have a program working with hgh school students in our Speedster program, which some would like to expand into more classes (note on the website the workshop facilitys we just completed).

But the problem with selling the recordings is that sooner or later, usually sooner, someone would just upload them to Youtube and that would be the end of the sales program.

It would be cool to have a "pay per view" setup where the content cant be downloaded or saved.. Maybe that sounds greedy or something, but these facilitys dont build themselves, our monthly expenses occur whether we have events or not. It takes regular donations and revenue to keep the doors open.

We are very appreciative that Kenny has generously supported our facility and goals as well as the many other people over the years and in the future.
But heck, we have trouble just keeping our webpage updated and content added. If anyone had any brilliant ideas, please PM me. I have a ton of pictures, and just havent had time to work on that. but will update this thread with some cool pix shortly