sorry the copy and paste is a bit of a read- but very interesting reading. Presuming this is in fact- THE Brian Crighton.


Brian Crighton says:
August 19, 2012 at 8:48 pm
I was one of the three original people involved in the new Norton project instigated by Stuart Garner. I had several meetings with Garner explaining that he needed huge amounts of money to be able to produce good quality motorcycles. At the time the only motorcycle that we could make was a copy of the NRV588 Rotary which I had built for the National Motorcycle Museum of a bike I designed for the 1994 race season. I said to him that I needed a proper test bed facility and all the necessary equipment to achieve this. He said there was no problem at all with financing this and I questioned him as to whether he had sufficient funds to finance this and the Norton factory start up. He always maintained that the money was no issue. I therefore agreed to take on the role of Technical Director of Norton Racing which was the only Norton company at the time. In my contract it stated that I was to receive 10% shares of the company for my expert involvement.

After starting, it became obvious to me that the guy was just full of bullcrap and I didn’t get any testbed or any facilities for building the two NRV588 Rotary’s. I said for the bikes to be reliable I needed to develop new rotor bearings which were the weak link in the engine. There weren’t even ramps in the so-called workshop so I built the bikes in my own workshop at home. Garner kept asking me when was I going to go to the unit at Donington to work on the bikes and I told him that if he thought I was going to crawl about on the floor to build bikes he must be joking. Eventually he agreed to get me some ramps and some equipment… Sentence removed from original pending corroboration.

Now we’ll talk about the Isle of Man TT. The first I heard about it was when I’d arranged to do some testing at Donington Park with Lee Dickinson to ride the bike. When I arrived in the garage I was introduced to Michael Dunlop and told that he had come to test the bike as he was riding it at the TT. I was obviously very unhappy about this as the bike was never designed for the TT circuit and was a lightweight quick turning short circuit bike completely wrong for the TT. I also said that the rotor bearings would not stand the long straights etc of the TT circuit due to overheating. I had several meetings with Garner telling him in no uncertain terms that if we go to the TT we would be made to look a laughing stock as the engine would break but as usual he would not listen to somebody that knew what they were talking about. Consequently Spondon Engineering had to rush and make two more chassis with bigger oil tanks and geometry to suit the TT Course. Due to this, the bikes were still being built up when we arrived at the I-o-M. The rest is history about this saga as everything happened the way I said it would and the engine failed in practice. Garnder said in MCN etc that every engine we had blew up at the I-o-M in fact, we only ever had two engines and only one blew up twice. Once at Jurby and once on the practice lap.

Now for the 961 which came as a protype from Kenny Dreer of America. I said that it would need a lot of redesign and extensive testing before it ever went on sale. But again, Garner thought he knew better and basically copied the bike and put it into production. Although according to MCN reports etc. the bike was supposedly completely redesigned. This was untrue. Inevitably, there were reliability issues.

Because Garner’s attitude and the lack of sufficent funds to finance Norton properly, I resigned. I didn’t want to be professionally associated with Garner. Obviously the 10% shareholding I signed for in the contract never materialised.

Lots of well known people in the motorcycle industry bought into the idea of Norton, but in my opinion we were all conned. Many left when they found out the truth. Staff also experienced problems when it came to getting paid.
I also feel very sorry for the people that have paid upfront in full for their bikes and have not received them: it’s the same old story.

Look at all the promises that have been made by Garner regarding a new 700cc Rotary that he says in the comics has been made and is ready to test on the dyno? What about the MotoGP bike he said they were building? It’s all just spin. The new TT bike that they said had been designed inhouse was in fact a road Aprilia engine put into a sawn off NRV frame – not a Norton at all and how lucky was Garner that the Senior Race was cancelled.

I think MCN have been misled by Garner into printing all sorts of claims about how many bikes they’re building a week etc. Sentence removed from original pending corroboration. They have to sell papers and the Norton concept helped them do that.

Obviously I have kept quiet about all of this, and more, hoping that someone who was owed lots of money would close the company, which still appears to be insolvent. 

Brian Crighton

Brian’s post has been edited with his approval. NICK.