When I was at the British National Motorcycle Museum a couple of years ago, some of my favorite bikes were the prototypes that were developed as Norton Villiers Triumph was foundering in a sea of red ink in the mid 1970s. With the Bonneville out of the picture and virtually no funds for new R&D or production tooling, they tried pouring all the remaining, outdated assets of BSA, Triumph and Norton into a blender and hitting “puree.” The results were mix-and-match specials, very much like what kids do with a Lego kit the seventh or eighth time they put it together.

Yes, that says Norton on the tank. The forward-canted 3-cylinder motor in the frame was originally a BSA, then went on to grow an electric starter and become the Triumph Trident T160. In this guise, it has been enlarged and inserted into a frame equipped with Norton’s biggest selling feature, the rubber-mounted Isolastic frame, so naturally it would have been marketed as a Norton product.
A couple more similar experimental Isolastic bikes are featured after the jump.


This was supposed to be the updated Commando for 1976, creatively named the “Norton 76.” The least innovative or interesting of these bikes, it was mostly the same Commando they’d been selling, updated with cast wheels and dual disc front brakes and restyled with lower handlebars and a smoother, squarer tank and seat.

The “P92” prototype is perhaps my personal favorite. It has BSA script on the tank now, but it was originally intended to be a Norton product. It’s a BSA 500 c.c. single-cylinder motor (which I once owned) canted forward to fit in the frame from the stillborn Triumph Bandit/BSA Fury 350 project. The frame had been subsequently modified to accept (yep, you guessed it) Norton Isolastic rubber engine mounts. This bike has Norton mufflers and bodywork and a BSA Rocket 3 front fender.

Note the left side shifter. A shifter on the right and brake on the left had been the traditional layout for British bikes, but the U.S. DOT mandated the reverse for bikes in 1975. The Triumph Bonneville and Norton Commando were redesigned to have the shift shaft extend through the left side of the engine. Lacking the funds to update the BSA single, this one has a complicated linkage arrangement running behind the engine.
Hey, po’ people got po’ ways.