Home » This Absurdly Rare Motorcycle You’ve Never Heard Of Has An Engine You’d Least Expect

This Absurdly Rare Motorcycle You’ve Never Heard Of Has An Engine You’d Least Expect

Norton F1 Ts
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Throughout history, numerous companies and individuals have attempted to reinvent the motorcycle. Some have experimented with diesel engines while others tried to make motorcycles that were like cars. Norton Motorcycles was among a handful of manufacturers that all tried, and failed, to cram rotary power into motorcycles. One of those bikes has come up for sale. This Norton F1 is a weird experiment into a new kind of motorcycle, and it’s so rare it’s going to be a while before you see another.

This 1990 Norton F1 used to be a museum piece at the UK’s National Motorcycle Museum, but now it’s up for grabs for anyone in the world to buy. Next month, it’ll be featured in the Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show 2024 by Iconic Auctioneers in the UK. The bike is one of just 140 made over the course of a couple of years, so who knows when we’ll see another.

Vidframe Min Top
Vidframe Min Bottom

If you can conjure up the funds to bring this one home, you’ll own a rare piece of history from an era when motorcycle manufacturers thought they could make Wankel engines work on two wheels.

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Everyone Wanted That Wankel

NSU-licensed rotary engines went off in an impressive number of directions. Curtiss-Wright got a license from NSU and put some larger rotary engines to work in flight testing. General Motors wanted to use the rotary for both the economical Vega and the sporty Corvette, where it would have been placed in a mid-rear layout. A longer non-exhaustive list of companies that experimented with rotary power included AMC, Suzuki, Motorrad Zschopau (IFA/MZ), Citroën, Daimler-Benz, Honda, Kawasaki, AvtoVAZ, Ford, Yamaha, and Van Veen. (And of course, Mazda is the obvious one we all know about).

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Motorcycle manufacturers were just as drawn to rotaries as carmakers, and they attempted to make their own Dorito bikes. The most famous rotary motorcycle is probably the Suzuki RE-5, which allegedly sold around 6,000 units between 1974 and 1976.

Hercules also thought the rotary engine was going to be the future of motorcycling. When the Hercules W-2000 beat the Suzuki RE-5 to market in 1974, the crowd went mild. Kawasaki also toyed with rotary power in 1972 with the Kawasaki X99 RCE, but that never made it to production. Yamaha also did its own rotary prototype with the Yamaha RZ201, and that also didn’t go on sale, either.

One by one, all of these companies eventually found out that rotaries weren’t exactly the magic dream engines they thought they were. As the New York Times reported in 1977, General Motors canceled its rotary program after the engine failed to “demonstrate the potential for low emissions levels and fuel economy equal to those of current reciprocating piston engines.”

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This warning from General Motors didn’t dissuade a few manufacturers. Mazda has famously embraced the rotary engine and hasn’t even given up on the technology in today’s world of electric vehicles. One of the other manufacturers to ignore GM’s cry was Norton Motorcycles and Van Veen. The latter built just 38 rotary motorcycles between 1978 and 1981. Norton technically had better luck.

Norton Bets On Rotaries

As the Vintagent writes, BSA was another manufacturer that felt that rotary power was the future, and in 1969, it hired young engineer David Garside to guide it through the new tech. Maybe BSA could have something new to use against the flood of Japanese motorcycles hitting the UK at the time. BSA’s market research suggested that the public would be interested in a rotary-powered bike if it was fast. Garside’s team started with a Fichtel & Sachs KM914 single rotor snowmobile Wankel that made all of 18 HP.

Bsastarprototype
Hockenheim Museum

According to the Norton Owners Club, Garside’s major breakthrough came from major changes to the engine’s intake and carburetor position. Rotary engines run hot and manufacturers initially didn’t know how to deal with that. Sachs kept engines cool by injecting incoming air through the Wankel’s rotor. This allowed the engine to run cool enough, but heated up the air so hot that the Sachs engine lost power.

Garside redesigned the Sachs engine to still use air to cool the rotor, but the air then went through a plenum chamber to cool down significantly, restoring the power lost in the previous design. This, along moving the carburetor to a new position which allowed for further cooling through evaporation, pumped power up to 32 HP. Later, Garside, with the help of Edward Turner protogé Bert Hopwood, would add a second rotor to the modded Sachs engine, adding power and upping displacement from 294cc to 588cc.

At first, Garside’s experiments were bolted into existing frames such as the BSA Starfire and the Triumph Bandit. But as development continued, so did the rest of the motorcycle. Eventually, rotary prototypes were seen with a new chassis with oil-filled tubes and looking more polished with integrated airboxes. As the Vintagent writes, Garside’s rotary development survived the tumultuous downfall of BSA and its merger with Norton. By 1978, Norton now had the rotary bike, and the P42 was slated to go into production. Journalists got to ride the new machine and brochures were printed, but then the motorcycle didn’t go on sale.

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Tn Norton Interpol Rotary 1536x1
Classic Super Bikes

It would take until 1984 for Norton to put its rotary motorcycle into production, but it wouldn’t be sold to the public. Instead, it was branded as the Interpol 2 and sold to police forces. In case you were wondering, the first Norton Interpol police bike was based on the piston-powered Commando.

The Interpol 2 featured a 588cc air-cooled twin-rotor Wankel making a healthy 85 HP and just 350 examples were made. The Interpol 2 was a police bike but also a testbed. If BSA/Norton’s rotary could survive police duty, it would have no problem getting regular people to work. Unfortunately, as Web Bike World writes, the Interpol 2 suffered from overheating and blown rotor seals, problems that plagued Wankels sold by a number of brands.

1707353 2
Mecum Auctions

Still, Norton didn’t want to give up the rotary dream. This was going to be the engine to set it apart from its rivals. Norton’s rotary would succeed where other motorcycle rotaries failed. Norton ordered the development of a water-cooled rotary to solve the existing engine’s overheating problems, and then Norton was sold once again.

As Rider Magazine wrote, Norton’s then-new owner wasn’t really that interested in fixing the cooling problem. Instead, Norton lifted the air-cooled engine out of the Interpol 2 and put it into the 1987 Classic, a motorcycle sold to the public in a limited run of just 100 units.

1989 Norton Commander P52 Las Ve
Mecum Auctions

Norton would eventually get around to upgrading the cooling of its rotary engine and in 1988, the Norton Commander was unleashed into the world. This bike still featured a 588cc twin-rotor Wankel, but now it was water-cooled. It made 85 HP in this guise and Norton covered up all of the ugly plumbing with extensive fairings. Reportedly, the Commander was an unimpressive bike with an interesting engine. It couldn’t corner like a sportbike and it wasn’t much of a looker, but it was reliable. Unfortunately, its 7,600-pound price meant just 253 units were sold between 1988 and 1992.

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Rotary Sportbike

Norton 3
Norton Motorcycles

That brings us to the beauty we see here today, the pièce de résistance of Norton’s rotary development, the F1.

According to Hagerty, engineer Brian Crighton and a team of employees began building a racing machine in secret. They took the Classic’s air-cooled rotary, souped it up, and put it in a chopped-down frame. The bike did 170 mph and that was enough to convince Norton brass to put an official rubber stamp on making a rotary racing machine. Now with official funding, the team was able to crank the power up to 133 HP and Spondon Engineering provided an advanced aluminum frame for even more weight savings.

19992
Norton Motorcycles

Then, something amazing happened. Norton’s RCW588 rotary racing bike, which was developed on a shoestring budget, started beating the better-funded competition, from Norton Motorcycles:

When it took third place in its club race debut at Darley Moor, the factory knew Crighton had built something special.

In 1988 the bike started winning national races with Steve Spray at the helm. JPS became the title sponsor for the 1989 season – the year Steve Spray won the British Formula One Championship and the 750cc Supercup Champion on the JPS-sponsored RCW588.

Success continued into the early nineties when Steve Hislop went above and beyond on his Abus Norton to defeat Carl Fogarty on his Yamaha and win the 1992 Isle of Man Senior TT – the first victory for a British bike in almost 30 years. It’s regarded as one of the greatest ever senior races to this day. Not long after in 1994, Ian Simpson matched Steve Spray’s British Superbike triumph on the Duckham’s-sponsored Norton completing two decades of success.

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Norton celebrated its rotary racer’s success in 1990 with the launch of the F1, a street-going version of the racing bike. The F1 was a sportbike featuring a 588cc water-cooled twin-rotor Wankel making 94 HP. It sported a twin-spar aluminum frame, WP suspension, Brembo brakes, Michelin tires, and a five-speed transmission from the Yamaha FZR1000.

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Reportedly, the Norton F1, which was offered in a John Player livery like the racing machines, was as quick as a Japanese 600 of the day, a reasonable 423-pound dry weight, and had a fun 145 mph top speed. However, the engine, despite being water-cooled, was still prone to overheating and the engine’s behavior was rough at low speeds. Even worse was the price of £12,670 (£30,442 today, or $39,541), which ensured only 140 examples found a home between 1990 and 1991.

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Norton’s response to poor sales was the Norton F1 Sport, which cheaped out on components for a lower price. Even fewer of those sold and around 70 F1 Sports were sold before Norton finally gave up on rotary power.

Ultimately, rotary power went about the same way for Norton as it did with the motorcycle companies before it. But Norton kept making more and more rotary motorcycles even as people didn’t buy them. The company even supplied small rotary engines for unmanned aerial vehicles. But these ventures didn’t stop Norton from circling the drain.

This F1

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However, time heals a lot of wounds. Norton’s rotary sportbike may have been a commercial failure that was prone to overheating, but now it can be your weird collectible. The 1990 Norton F1 up for grabs in the Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show 2024 by Iconic Auctioneers is a cream puff.

Like all F1s, this motorcycle was built by hand at Shenstone and was given a wonder John Player livery and a Spondon aluminum frame. It has seemingly lived a pretty gentle life with five owners, one of them being the UK’s National Motorcycle Museum. The museum raffled off the motorcycle in 2016 with 6,254 miles to the fourth owner. The fifth owner and seller picked it up in 2018. Now it has all of 6,488 miles. So, this motorcycle hasn’t gone very far in its life.

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Norton Motorcycles 1990 F1 1536x
Norton Motorcycles

Buying this bike will also get you its original brochure, manual, toolkit, and receipts for all of the work that has been done to it over the years. The auction house expects it to sell for between £30,000 ($38,967) and £35,000 ($45,462) before taxes, so don’t expect a bargain here. At the very least, you have until November 10 to get the money or enough willing friends to go in on the bike with you.

If you are the lucky one to buy this F1, you’ll be getting a motorcycle you’re unlikely to run into anywhere else. Sure, the F1 wasn’t the game-changing motorcycle Norton was banking on it to be, but as I can tell you from owning a rotary motorcycle, owning and riding a rotary bike is an experience unlike any other.

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(Images: Iconic Auctioneers, unless otherwise noted.)

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Phil Ventura
Phil Ventura
1 month ago

you forgot to mention that the vw ‘super beetle’ was designed for the rotary engine, but vw couldn’t get the fuel mileage, this was early 70s when the gas scrunch started.

Slow Joe Crow
Slow Joe Crow
1 month ago

Now that commenting works, I can say not only did I immediately recognize the Norton F1, I may still have the copy of Performance Bike with the article about the TT win. We are not all millenials here

Shooting Brake
Shooting Brake
1 month ago

Always liked these

Scott Ross
Scott Ross
1 month ago

Not going to lie I like the late 80s early 90s motorcycles. Pacific Coast, K1, the F1 and Commander. All great looking bikes

Scott Ross
Scott Ross
1 month ago

is there one of these at the barber museum?

Musicman27
Musicman27
1 month ago

Too bad Mazda bought the rights to the Wankel engine and stoped using it. 🙁

Chronometric
Chronometric
1 month ago
Reply to  Musicman27

Like most, I love the clever and compact design of the rotary engine but if dozens of car and motorcycle companies over 70 years can’t make it work, it is time to move on.

Jason Vorhan
Jason Vorhan
1 month ago

@Mercedes, this was a poster bike of my era; it was on my wall next to the RG500, Gsxr, FZR, Bimotas, etc. so for some of us, this is not unheard of.

Being a Lotus fan, anything with a JPS livery always caught my attention, please look into the JPS RG500.

But my ignorance lies with the fact that this was so limited in production, so thank you for writing this, and this is such a wicked article that you have me perusing ads for for late 80s and 90s bikes once again; at my “peak” I had a full garage of 16 sport bikes of the era.

I’ve trimmed this down to an 88 FZR 400, an RZ500 and a ZX11 (my 5 year old son has a PW50), but now I have the itch to grab another.

So thank you for your continued support for us on two wheels that are also car nuts, I appreciate what you write.

Dudeoutwest
Dudeoutwest
1 month ago
Reply to  Jason Vorhan

Sure, I’m old, but all my moto friends know what this thing is. No offense intended.

Black Peter
Black Peter
1 month ago
Reply to  Jason Vorhan

Not sure where the age average is on this site, and I love that Mercedes, covers weird 80-90s bike but the declarative “You’ve Never Heard Of” on a bike that, yes, I have and read all about it in the day, is ageist!

Jason Vorhan
Jason Vorhan
1 month ago
Reply to  Black Peter

Well, we are old, so ageist or not, it’s a fact.

Btw, if anyone can find a minty 1989 GSXR 1100 in boy racer blue, please reach out to me; it’s interestingly escaped my reach continuously.

https://www.ebay.com/motors/blog/the-passion-behind-a-1989-suzuki-gsx-r1100/

Thanks!

Morgan Thomas
Morgan Thomas
1 month ago
Reply to  Jason Vorhan

Also an 80s bike nut here – limited funds mean I only have a GPz750-A3 and an RG250WE-1, but if funds permitted would love to add an RG500, a V-Max, a GPz750 Turbo, and an 1100 Katana.

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
1 month ago

A lot of companies sure went around in circles trying to make rotary engines commercially viable. I loved my ‘80 RX-7, but it had an outsize thirst for such a small engine. This was mostly balanced by its generous power comparable to a larger piston engine and its greater fuel consumption. However, no amount of smoothness and rorty exhaust soundtrack, could offset its mechanical issues. Didn’t help that small piston engine advances were able to provide equal power, more efficiency, and better reliability at a lower price point. Still, nothing else on the road feels or sounds like a rotary when it’s working well.

Chronometric
Chronometric
1 month ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

“went round in circles”… ha ha.

Morgan Thomas
Morgan Thomas
1 month ago
Reply to  Chronometric

Technically a rotary didn’t go round in circles – the rotor tips followed an epitrochoidal path!

Spikedlemon
Spikedlemon
1 month ago

I can only imagine the effort it would take to keep this motorcycle operational.

Old Italian bikes are notoriously high-maintenance, but an out-of-business (the current company is entirely different) British low-volume bike with known issues, and an uncommon engine, is not going to make for fun ownership.

Gilbert Wham
Gilbert Wham
1 month ago
Reply to  Spikedlemon

Traditionally, British motorbikes are supposed to spend a large part of their life in a partially dismantled state in a corner of the kitchen, so all of that should be factored in to the owner experience.

LMCorvairFan
LMCorvairFan
1 month ago
Reply to  Gilbert Wham

That was my experience with my own Triumph and lived vicariously through friends who owned BSA, Triumph and Norton. Several owned Italian bikes which were just as bad. Harleys also owned the kitchens.

Spikedlemon
Spikedlemon
1 month ago
Reply to  Gilbert Wham

Sounds like a better recipe for single life.

Angry Bob
Angry Bob
1 month ago

If you’re into rare Nortons, check out Allen Millyard on Youtube where he’s restoring a 1 of 1 Norton Nemesis – a wild aluminum bodied sportbike with a V8 engine.

https://www.youtube.com/@AllenMillyard

Speedway Sammy
Speedway Sammy
1 month ago

From a hp/weight and vibration standpoint, the rotary seems so perfect for bikes. Cooling, as mentioned in the article, is probably the big drawback. The fact that rotary never really prospered in outboard motors or snowmobiles where cooling isn’t an issue tells us its fuel economy and emission shortcomings were difficult to overcome.

Drive By Commenter
Drive By Commenter
1 month ago

De Soto?

Michael Beranek
Michael Beranek
1 month ago

Hmm, a DeSoto motorcycle would have to have a record player (or phonograph, look it up shorties) and that seems like it would be difficult to engineer.

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