So what do you get?
♠ The trademark. Which basically allows you to use the Norton name in territories from which you are not excluded by licence terms. The upside is that the licencees pay you an annual fee for the privilege of operating there. Your lawyers need to uncover the terms and conditions of everything pertaining to licencee deals as part of your due diligence process.
♠ The Atlas. Other companies have agreements with you to build the bike: Kinetic (frames) and Jinlang / Zongshen (motors). Your lawyers – they’re going to be busy – need to check the small print and you need to figure out how and where you’re going to bolt them together. Properly. Oh yeah, and you’re going to have to find people to sell them who don’t want to kill you as soon as you mention the N word.
♠ The 961 motor remains very largely the work of Kenny Dreer, the guy who sold it to Stewart Garner in the first place. Jinlang in China are building the motors, which is good news, because you really don’t want to be doing that. Unfortunately though, they aren’t building the whole bike. That means there are various suppliers to sort out, and for some of them the name Norton may be deeply problematic. That’s before you get anywhere near sorting your distribution.
♠ The V4. Just forget it. Warranty work went through the roof early doors and of all Norton products, this one is the most toxic. For many reasons.
How do you resurrect the brand? Well, you could put everything into lockdown for a good while and then start again. That’s the sane PR move. Let’s face it, there was awful voodoo around the marque for years before Stewart Garner got involved: court cases all over the place, owners club disputes, the albatross of NVT (1600 workers laid off), and generally being saddled with whole worlds of pain going way way back. All the wrangling meant there was no one to protect the trademark when it most needed it: ie when it was appropriated as Anti Virus software. So put it all to sleep for a few years, and stick a few quid aside for witch doctor fees. Go to confession. Play nice. Play straight.
Remarkably, despite the torture, it remains the most iconic of all British marques. So what’s it worth? Well, that depends partly on what Metro are prepared to accept as well as what you are prepared to offer given a) all of the above and b) the knowledge that the real expenditure will start the moment you’ve signed the check. It would help enormously if you already had a functioning production line somewhere in the world and routinely delegated design and engineering to people who actually knew what they were doing. Assuming all that, anything up to £3m looks possible. Which, of course, is a fraction of the debt.
If a deal can’t be done, that means liquidation. Anything left goes to auction to see what can be achieved on the day. Norton as a company will cease to exist. In the US, licencees would be protected and since the TM is vested in Norton America (parent company: Norton Holdings) the name is sure to live on in at least one of its many incarnations. It probably would anyway. It’s the nature of the beast.
Is there any export value left in the 961 motor anyway? How much further development investment is required (presumably by Jinlang) to make it Euro 5 compliant – assuming that it’s actually possible?
Exactly. I’m not sure the 961 was even Euro 3 compliant…. the whole question of certification of Donington Nortons remains something of a minefield….
What were the owners club disputes?
Andover Norton / Norton Germany were in dispute with the owners club re IP rights. To an outside observer, the OC also seemed extraordinarily reluctant to permit criticism of the Garner era but that’s another story.
So can now buy one? Do I will have problems in terms of quality? Or I can only buy and ride my dream?