Trouble at Mill

lardygitTVR said:
Murray B's conspiracy theory that the Jap motorcycle manufacturers are trying to wipe out their markets by causing riders to die in 'endo' accidents is utterly laughable. Surely modern bikes generally have their engines higher in the frame for ground clearance reasons, not to deliberately induce stoppies. And another reason modern Jap bikes can do stoppies is because they have vastly more rubber on the front than the skinny Commando tyre, and hugely superior brakes. I suppose fairly short wheelbases also contribute to this supposed stoppy problem, but surely that is to make the bike more agile.

To believe a sixties Commando is more capable than modern sports bikes is the stuff of a deluded mind. When I'm out on a ride on my Fastback, all my mate on his R1 has to do is twitch his right hand and I'm left for dead. When we come to a bend he lays his bike over and disappears into the distance while I'm ploughing a furrow with my solid foot-peg. Also, his maintenance is minimal but reliability is incredible, while I'm trying to come to terms with some of the worst design and quality control I've ever seen on a mechanical object.

That said, I'd choose a Commando over any other bike any time - I absolutely love it.

Level the playing field! pull a couple of plug leads off his R1, and let his tyres down :lol:
 
Matt Spencer said:
The ' safty legeslation ' introduced to the U.S. WAS industrial espionage .

The Japanese had designed their vehicals to drive square into square concrete blocks at 30 m.p.h.
An everyday occurance in Toko ?
It wasnt untill B.M.W. started driveing cars into other things , that any significant crash protection was envisaged ( crumple zones , etc )

Knowing ( full Well ) that the American Automotive Industry had at the time , a " 7 year lead time " ( design to production / marketing )
it was calculated to stall the Automotive manufacturers , so as the Japanese would be enabled to establish a foothold .
Not to say they arnt industrious little snots .
Then theres W W II , designed to breakk the British Empire , whilst the Americans supply all the military equipment , in exchange for the Gold Reserves .

Russia later told them to get knotted , as far as payments were concerned . Then the Plot Thickens , Stalin planed to Liberate Europe , after the Jumped up Nazis had overextended themselves. Young Adolf , haveing got wind of this , was forced to take the first step . General Winter put paid to that lot .
Did I leave anything out ? Heaps Actually . :shock:

Matt! didnt quite see the connection with New Norton, I will read it again ,just incase it's encrypted :lol:
 
john robert bould said:
Matt! didnt quite see the connection with New Norton, I will read it again ,just incase it's encrypted

3 Left turns is the same as a Right turn.
 
Trouble at the mill? Has one on't cross beams gone owt askew on treadle?
 
Murray, In any complex society it is often difficult to ascribe a cause and effect to certain situations, The British motorcycle industry certainly didn't collapse on it's own, but the management of many of these once proud but now defunct companies are well-documented to have helped them on their way by lack of investment, lack of vision and a total lack of sense of what their customer base actually wanted. They made bikes by squandering their workers time and skills because they wouldn't buy the equipment necessary to meet the rising standards of quality and reliability that consumers demanded. Robotic assembly techniques are the quantum leap in manufacturing that has catapulted us into the computer-age - for better or worse! In the USA standards in the automobile industry were driven up on the back of demands by consumer groups led by the likes of Ralph Nader, the Japanese simply reacted quicker than their European and American counterparts in producing a product that consumers wanted. When legislation was enacted to standardise positioning of gear levers etc. by far the bulk of two wheeled vehicles being registered and on the road by then were Japanese, all of these 'nicest people' Having met each other on a Honda a number of years prior to this. There seems to be in certain quarters, a tendency to blame someone else for things rather than look at one's own failures. The Japanese are not 'at fault' for producing a product that the consumers wanted, this is simply reacting to 'market forces', that great rubric of the Capitalist system. Surely the managers in the US and the UK who failed to react should be our subjects of opprobrium.
 
dave M said:
...all of these 'nicest people' Having met each other on a Honda a number of years prior to this....

And the "nicest people" campaign has to be one of the most successful in advertising history, helping to greatly expand the market they were so ready to serve.
 
lardygitTVR said:
Murray B's conspiracy theory...
Back in the sixties we had an expression, “Just because I’m paranoid it doesn’t mean THEY are not out to get me.” Multinationals “greasing” the best governments that money can buy has been established by many sources and I do not intend to delve into that matter any further. This relates to the new Commando because if the new company becomes a threat to the multinationals then the greasy ones are likely to legislate again.

dave M said:
... total lack of sense of what their customer base actually wanted...
What passes for history today is largely fiction. Unlike most of you young people I bought my ’74 Commando new in 1975 when NVT was very much in business. At the time they were selling all the bikes they could make and certain models were almost impossible to find. The popularity of the Commando was so great that it is still no problem to find one today, thirty-some years later. Of course it helped tremendously that NVT’s last thought was for their customers and formed a company to keep making parts. No multinational would ever do something like that.

Just by looking at the photographs of the new “Norton” I can see that it carries its weight very high and will probably “endoverendo” fairly easily. This might be okay for professionals but too dangerous for a street bike as far as I am concerned.

Now I’m going to start a new thread about how a sensible person could buy that old style Commando even though a HoYaSuKa with cylinders and/or camshafts all over the place could be had for the same price.
 
Murray B said:
Rohan said:
Are you referring to all the early Nortons using French engine designs ?...What goes around comes around ??...
Norton did not steal the design they used Clement engines. This is not the same as industrial theft.

No ? Nortons soon tried making their own version of the Peugeot v-twin. And borrowed ideas from other makers to then make their own line of single cylinder engines. Why is this any different to what the Chinese and Japanese and Koreans and Taiwanese are doing ? Or the Spanish or Italians or Germans or Americans, when it comes down to it, over the past century and a bit. Any good idea is soon widely adopted, and patent-infringing and patent side-stepping is all part of the game.
 
Rohan said:
No ? Nortons soon tried making their own version of the Peugeot v-twin...
Norton did not steal the design they used Peugeot engines. This is not the same as industrial theft.

Wouldn’t a post such as yours be more suitable for a HoYaSuKa forum rather than a Norton one?
 
Murray B said:
...

Just by looking at the photographs of the new “Norton” I can see that it carries its weight very high and will probably “endoverendo” fairly easily. This might be okay for professionals but too dangerous for a street bike as far as I am concerned.

...
:roll: Your not sounding too good here :lol:
 
Murray B said:
Rohan said:
No ? Nortons soon tried making their own version of the Peugeot v-twin...
Norton did not steal the design they used Peugeot engines. This is not the same as industrial theft.

Wouldn’t a post such as yours be more suitable for a HoYaSuKa forum rather than a Norton one?

Have a look at Norton history. After Rems win in 1907, Nortons had a go at making a version of a Peugeot type twin - which wasn't successful. And then borrowed all the features of other engines to make their own single.

If you are going to post rubbish about motorcycle history, then it is only fair that someone points this out. Everyone back then was copying each others designs, same as they are now, what has changed ? Why is it 'theft' now, and not back then ???
 
Yea , I though louis Carrolls cousin , Joe . Was in the land of spreckenseideutsche and ' borrowed ' it from NSU or their grandmother .
Hymph .
' tripe ' & ' the press ' go hand in hand .

Nader was in ' the infuance ' of forigners , not that the U.S. makers wernt complacent ( see ' steering columns )
but his labasting of the Corvair , whilst ignoring the Volkswagen , and the fact that a IRS rather than swing axle version
was available , likewise the 911 . For 61 the U.S. factory handling kit was a 50 Lb lump or two of lead to fit in the front buppers.
The wonders of modern tecnology .

Noteably the Aussie ' Two Wheels ' magazine invents quotes atributeing them to turner , and in the same magazine
calls a old 750 at 210 Kg ' heavy / overweight ' and a new machine of the same weightt as ' relitively light for its size ' .

The Japanese had been lineing up the ' forign markets ' for ' some time ' ( decades ) . If it was neccesary to cause them to collapse , so as to infiltrate them . So be it .
Though it were Honda 50s , their domestic production exceeded the forign markets by far , at that stage ' .

Looking at Unions , communist opperatives , the C.N.D.s ' source and the Aircraft industie gives a good comparison
of the manipulations . Theres a book published on the ' safety scam ' , should be findable on google, implicateing Nader
in forign shenanagens . Why , not to long before ' industry ' had devoled millions of man hours in aircraft production .
Hundreds of thousands of the things . Then theres ' Tucker , and Hughes 'flying boat as examples of corperate lynch mobs .
 
Of course Nader was an unamerican Pinko, Commie, red-under-the-bed. he's probably actually Japanese as the name sounds a bit 'foreign'! The point is that the Corvair was killing people, it appears that the the Beetle wasn't.

Most of the people on here like Nortons - particularly Commandos, some of us prefer Nortons and some love Nortons above all else, but it doesn't devalue our machines to admit that there are better performing motorcycles out there in most measurable parameters. We like our Nortons for reasons adequately stated on other posts. However to claim that the company (and the British industry) went bust because of some murky conspiracy is sheer nonsense. Of course the Japanese companies were trying to conquer their markets - that's what companies do. Look at Apple Corp., the American film industry and HSBC - to name just 3.

Back to the Modern Norton discussion; they are getting bad press because of bad business practice. I met a chap at our annual motorcycle show on Sunday here in Hong Kong, he had paid in full for a new Norton and had been fobbed off with excuses and multiple failures to reply to communications. The fact that one or two people have received their bikes and have by all accounts been happy with them and the subsequent service, does nothing to inspire confidence in the face of the company's poor performance in relation to communication and transparency which is the area that matters most in my opinion.
 
Rohan said:
Why is it 'theft' now, and not back then ???

At what point did I talk about theft now? At any rate theft would be if a company were to adopt a feature that was patented by another company without obtaining a licence or permission. Did Peugeot have a patent on the V-twin and if so then in what way did Norton violate it or are you talking about something the new Norton company has done?
 
My point was that everyone has been pirating, stealing, borrowing, copying everyone else's (motorcycle) features designs ideas and sidestepping patents for longer than anyone can remember, and in more ways than anyone can possibly remember. To single any one maker out as holier than anyone else is making a mockery of history. ? Perhaps we should just leave it there..... Cheers.
 
Yes, but Mr Garners Company are making all efforts to supply motorcycles to their customers, and actually ARE supplying motorcycles. If mere "cash flow problems" are causing problems in supply, then we can only hope they can trade through these problems...
 
In my estimation, Norton is being run like a Ponzi scheme. This may not of been Garner's intention, but a reaction to severe under capitalization. All the signs are there. 100% deposits, unfulfilled delivery promises. What Garner is attempting to do, start a new motorcycle manufacturing company, takes hundreds of millions of dollars. Even with 100% deposits the company is, no doubt, losing money. Especially when start-up costs are considered. I believe it took quite a few years for Trimuph to turn the corner to profitability and that was with some fairly good early sales numbers. In most every form of manufacturing unit profit is not achieved until some length of production has occurred. Norton is far from achieving that. I am, by no means, hoping for Norton to fail. I'm only viewing it from a realistic vantage point. If I were Garner, I'd make a trip to Omaha, looking up one Warren Buffet.
 
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