Norton Returns to U.S. from Base in Connecticut

By Bud Wilkinson of RIDE-CT.com

Seated in a Starbucks in Seymour not far from his home, Dan Van Epps was explaining over coffee how Norton motorcycles are made, drawing upon the company’s iconic name and emphasizing how they’re “hand-built British motorcycles built by British hands.”

He flipped over a stapled stack of white paper, promotional literature for potential dealers, and began sketching on the back. As he noted how most manufacturers operate assembly lines where bikes proceed along a conveyor with parts getting added, his inked schematic of the Norton factory floor revealed a series of side-by-side bays, much like stalls in a horse barn.

“Two technicians build one bike at a time,” Van Epps said. “Each motorcycle is truly a hand-built piece of work.” With only one shift at the factory, located inside the famed Donington Park Grand Prix Circuit in the Midlands of England, output is small. While other brands can increase production by adding another shift or adding another assembly line, Norton’s less dramatic and less costly approach is to simply add bays.

The company can produce as many as 10 bikes a day and is selling them in Europe. It expects them to go on sale in the U.S. within the next three months at nine dealerships that are primarily located on the east and west coasts. With deposits for bikes and existing dealer orders totaling between 100 and 300 bikes, the biggest immediate challenge is to satisfy initial demand. Van Epps said it will likely take until late fall until all orders are filled.

The Norton nameplate dates back to 1898. That’s when the original company began in Birmingham, England. It produced the well-known Commando models in the late 1960s and early 1970s before going belly up in the mid-70s, a victim of superior Japanese motorcycles.

Norton was revived in late 2008 when Stuart Garner, a U.K. businessman who made his money in fireworks, bought the rights. For the past four years, and with a few frustrating delays as sufficient capital was obtained and infrastructure built, Norton Motorcycles Ltd. has been working to bring Garner’s vision of a modern-day Norton to the world’s roadways.

Van Epps, a 60-year-old native of Woodbridge and former CEO of Ducati North America who got his start as a motorcycle mechanic at Buckland Cycles on the Southington-Plainville line, was hired in December 2010 to steer Norton’s return in the U.S. Working solo for most of that time, he’s been slowly building a dealer network and obtaining federal and individual state approval to sell Nortons on this side of the pond.

“Those are high hurdles for a very small company,’ he said. Van Epps’ business card lists a post office box in Beacon Falls as the company’s mailing address, but U.S. headquarters is actually a home office.

“We’d like to have about 50 dealers in two years. That doesn’t sound like a lot,” Van Epps said. The rationale is that giving each dealer a wide footprint from which to draw customers will encourage them to promote the brand and make a profit. “I have a rather large stack of dealers who want to be dealers. Finding 50 good candidates is easy,” he said.

While there isn’t a dealer in New England currently, Van Epps said the goal is to eventually have one in Connecticut, another in the Boston area as well as perhaps one in Rhode Island and one in the Albany, N.Y. area. There are currently dealers in New Jersey and on Long Island.

Norton is offering three models – the Commando 961 SF, the Commando 961 Café Racer and Commando 961 Sport. There are two frame configurations for either solo seat or dual-seat riding. The bikes use a 961cc parallel twin engine that has 80 horsepower. The suspension comes from Ohlins and Brembo supplies the brakes. “I love riding the Norton. It’s a proper British roadster,” said Van Epps.

Given its “semi-niche” status and the high-end components, many of which are machined at the factory, Norton has a rather reasonable price structure. Prices range from $16,000 to $20,000.

The original hope was to have Nortons available in the U.S. by May 2011. That’s didn’t happen. Van Epps said the company was overly-optimistic and overly-enthusiastic in assessing all that was required in re-launching a brand. “We needed to build a factory, develop an engineering team, find the vendors to create the components and begin assembling bikes. Incredibly, they’ve done it,” he said.

Accelerating the process wouldn’t have been prudent, if it had been possible. “There’s too many things to do,” he said. Having such a long ramp-up and taking so long to bring Nortons to the U.S. has the benefit of customers here getting a fully tested, trouble-free machine. “Anything that can go wrong, has gone wrong. In the long run, it’s a silver lining,” Van Epps said.

Joining Norton has been “a once in two lifetimes opportunity” for Van Epps. “None of us is getting rich,” he said. The bigger payoff for this lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, who rides a 1966 Triumph Bonneville, is getting to see a bit of motorcycling’s heritage restored.

Here’s more from Dan Van Epps…

Dan Van Epps on 2013 for Norton:

Dan Van Epps on Norton’s heritage:

Dan Van Epps on challenge of bring Norton back to U.S.: