Meet the saviour of the storied Norton motorcycle
In 2008, Stuart Garner bought legendary British motorcycle maker Norton and began an ambitious programme to turn the company into a superbike superstar. The key? Make sure everyone at the company loves riding motorcycles
Stuart Garner is celebrating a decade since his revival of the Norton motorcycle brand into a luxury name for the ultimate in boys’ toys engineering.
What drives a man to stake a small fortune on nothing but a name? That probably depends on the name – in this case, Norton, venerated maker of motorcycles; and the man – Norton CEO Stuart Garner, who bought this iconic British marque in 2008, then resurrected the brand to new heights while staying rooted in its 120-year history.
Now in his late 40s, Garner remembers watching the British Motorcycle Championships as a teenager with his father. When the Norton bikes passed, Union Jack flags would ripple along the grandstand, cementing the brand’s place in a young enthusiast’s heart.
“Motorcycle riding calls to the hard-edged ruggedness of the biker lifestyle. The Norton brand has always been about a raw authenticity that, if we let it speak, I somehow knew other people would buy into,” Garner says.
In the 10 years since Garner’s purchase, Norton Motorcycles has become something of a recovery story in British manufacturing. The company is headquartered in Donington Hall in Leicestershire, England, in a 26-country-acre site purchased from British Airways in 2013. Each year, about 1,000 hand-built motorbikes roll out of its 45,000-square-foot production facility, with prices starting around £20,000 (HK$219,000).
Garner came into the picture and in four days closed a deal that supplied him with the rights to the Norton brand, four shipping crates of motorcycle parts, and four prototype bikes
Soon to hit the market will be the £28,000 Norton V4 RR, a lightweight 179kg machine with a 1200cc, 200bhp engine that pushes a top speed over 200mph – in racing parlance, a superbike, designed for greater power and smoother handling. Its limited-edition brother, the V4 SS, is already sold out at a £44,000 pre-order price. This development project cost around £7 million to £4 million of which came from a UK government grant support, recognising the company’s contribution to jobs in the British supply chain.