NORTON V4-SS Time to party
Norton has created a bike that looks, sounds and handles great. Alan Cathcart was the first person outside the factory to get a ride.
“I say, that’s a very bright-looking bike!” exclaimed the husband of the 50-something couple as they walked past where I’d stopped for a coffee break at the Fleur-de-Lys pub on the banks of the Stratford Canal at Lowsonford. “What is it?” Before I could answer, his smartly dressed wife in best WI garb complete with Thatcher- type handbag, did it for me. “I know what it is!” she said eagerly. “It’s the new Norton V4 that I saw a programme about on the BBC, after they did rather well in the Isle of Man TT races last summer. I was hoping to see one of them one day – how does it go? It looks very fast!”
Well, after reminding myself never to judge a book by its cover, I had to admit to Mrs Diana Williams that, yes, the new Norton V4-SS is indeed VERY fast, and to husband Ray that its trademark chrome paint scheme is indeed VERY bright, as well as unmistakeably Norton – it makes the V4-SS such a visual standout that any of the fortunate few owners can’t help but make an impression at any bike gathering by its sheer presence, even before he – or she - lights up the engine. For here I was in the heart of Shakespeare country 50 miles south of Norton’s Donington Hall factory, becoming more impressed by the minute at a) their new 1200 V4’s ability to attract favourable comment as well as, if you stop it anywhere in public, a crowd, and b) how incredibly rewarding it had been to ride it here, to the middle of the Warwickshire countryside where I grew up. These country lanes interspersed with fast stretches of highway full of daunting turns and demanding hills once were the preferred test ground for riders from the Norton factory (then just 20 miles away in Birmingham), where they’d rev it up with their fellow testers from the neighbouring BSA and Triumph firms. Even today these roads come close to being motorcycling nirvana, as well as a fine venue for assessing the merits of Britain’s latest and greatest on two wheels – as well as its biggest, and quite possibly best.
Production underway
For the Norton 1200 V4, the first all-British hypersports model ever to reach the marketplace, was unveiled at the Birmingham NEC show in November 2016, with the debut of not one, but two versions of the hand-built, UK-designed 1200cc Superbike – one of which immediately sold out.
Since then the world has waited with increasing frustration to see just what this amazing looking motorcycle is really all about, as the planned start of production got progressively delayed in best Italian bike manufacturing mode.
Last October, without any fanfare, Norton finally began delivering examples of the limited edition 1200 V4-SS priced at £44,000, all 200 versions of which were already sold before its launch to customers eager to acquire the ultimate performance motorcycle bearing the name of Britain’s most historic sporting brand. Since then, production has gradually ramped up, and when Norton Motorcycles owner/CEO Stuart Garner summoned me to Norton’s Donington Hall HQ to become the first person outside the company to ride the V4-SS on British roads, I saw for myself that production of the fastest, most powerful and most technically advanced British motorcycle yet conceived, really was underway.
So why was Norton so late in starting deliveries of the V4 models, I asked Stuart as he handed me the keys of V4-SS no. 001/200, the first in the line of such bikes being built, which Garner is keeping for himself – well, wouldn’t you? “It was all about the engine,” said Stuart resignedly. “I can’t over-emphasise how big a job it is designing and developing an all-new motor, especially a 1200cc V4 giving 200bhp-plus. But for me, the only way of bringing Norton back right was to develop our own engine – we couldn’t have had anybody else’s in it. Ok, we‘ve been racing the Aprilia RSV4 motor in our TT bikes, but that was only to get Norton back in racing where it belongs, and to learn about designing a chassis to harness that sort of performance. But after we had some delays in getting the motors built owing to supplier issues, then the engine calibration proved another headache. I wouldn’t say it was more difficult than we’d expected, but we didn’t want to get it wrong. We still have the bruises of 2011-2012 when some of those early Commandos went out too soon, and it bit us really badly. So now we’re probably over-sensitive in making sure the bike’s right.” Oh, and by the way, Mrs Williams, Norton’s Aussie ace Josh Brookes did indeed do rather well in the 2018 Senior TT, finishing fifth on the Norton SG6 in its final outing with an Aprilia engine. This year, Norton’s ‘other’ rider, the legendary John McGuinness, who sat out the TT last year while still recovering from injury, will be racing a lighter version of this V4-SS I’m riding, but with its Norton V4 engine tuned to produce over 240bhp!
Home-grown power
After the 200 examples of the V4-SS have all been built by what’s expected to be the start of June, Norton will then start work on the 300 units of the less costly Norton V4-RR priced at £ 28,000 which Garner aims to build in 2019, fitted with a cast aluminium frame and swingarm rather than the SS variant’s hand-fabricated chassis, but otherwise identical. Both versions are powered by the same all-new Euro 4 compliant liquidcooled 16-valve
72º V4 engine with chain-driven dohc developed by Norton at Donington Hall, after an initial collaboration with leading design consultants Ricardo Motorcycle ended in 2016, and Norton’s Head of Design, Simon Skinner, took the entire project inhouse. The fruits of his R&D team’s labours have now entered production, after calibration of the EFI developed by Norton was finalised in Switzerland by three-time Moto2
World Champion manufacturer Eskil Suter’s Suter Racing Technology/SRT.
Measuring 82 x 56.8mm for an exact capacity of 1200cc, the V4 engine is built in-house in the Norton factory, and is claimed to produce in excess of 200bhp at 12,500rpm, with maximum torque of 130Nm delivered at 10,000 revs – even more than the pretty punchy 122Nm Aprilia RSV4 1100 I’d been riding round the Mugello GP circuit just four days before my Norton ride. It features titanium valves, a 6-speed cassette gearbox and slipper clutch with two-way autoblipper and powershifter, plus dual injectors per cylinder and a constantly variable-length intake system. There’s a full ride-by-wire throttle controlling the front and rear cylinder banks independently via Norton’s own ECU, which offers a choice of three riding modes – Road, Race and Rain.
“The V4 is entirely our own engine, and owes nothing to Aprilia,” says Simon Skinner. “We designed the complete motorcycle including the chassis at the same time as the engine, to allow us to put everything where we want it, and it’s allowed us to create an incredibly compact package. For a 1200cc 72º V4 it’s incredibly tiny, yet the riding position means taller riders are comfy, too.”
I’ll say. Throwing a leg over the Norton immediately revealed the good-looking 817mm high seat adorned with the Union Jack on its tail, and with the filler cap for the fuel tank at its front, to be both comfortable and spacious, even with the relatively high footrests needed for ground clearance at full lean, thanks to the mega-grip from the 200/55-17 Dunlop Sportmax GP Racer D212 mounted on the 6in OZ forged aluminium rear wheel – unpainted carbon bikes are fitted as standard with matching BST carbon wheels. The spacious riding position, despite the Norton’s relatively compact build, meant I could tuck away behind the pretty vestigial screen down long, fast stretches of road, and kid myself I was helping the Norton go faster – though not with that ultra-flat plateau of mega-torque from 4000-13,000rpm, I wasn’t. More to the point, at 1.80m in height I could easily put both feet flat on the ground at traffic lights. This means that despite its unmistakeably sporting tail-up stance, the 1200 V4 is accessible for any size of rider, thanks mainly to the way that the exquisitely crafted extruded aluminium spaceframe is waisted in the middle.
Butch biking
Thumbing the starter button on the V4-SS is the entry ticket to a wall of sound that’s unbelievably butch, and comes straight from the MotoGP grid, thanks to the completely unsilenced titanium race exhaust fitted as standard to the V4-SS models, but a paid-for option on the V4-RR. The exhaust note is unmistakeably unique – nobody else makes a 72º V4.
Everywhere you go and at almost any revs higher than its fast 1700cc idle speed, this sounds like the bike it undoubtedly is, a deep-throated, ultra-muscular, no-prisoners uber-Uberbike that’s committed to the cause, and deadly effective in achieving it.
Sweet-shifting as the Norton undoubtedly is, with a perfectly dialled-in two-way powershifter, which means your left hand stays clamped to the clip-on even in traffic, it has so much torque almost anywhere in the powerband that shifting gear becomes practically optional. It’ll pull off idle with hardly any clutch slip, then once under way you can gas it wide open in top gear from just 2500rpm upwards without a hint of transmission snatch – although below that the fuelling is a bit hit ‘n’ miss. With the 13,500rpm limiter, this means the Norton is practically an automatic – and don’t imagine
that it struggles to get going from such low revs, either. As soon as the ultra-legible TFT dash (which has three different graphics, one for each riding mode out of Road, Race and Rain) shows 4000rpm on the tach reading, the Norton surges ahead with explosive purpose – this is a muscle bike that delivers on promises, and then some. I spent most of the day short-shifting the Norton around 8500- 9000rpm, and that delivered more than enough performance for real world riding.
Ride it right out to the rev limiter in third or fourth gear, and you’d better hold on tight, because at higher revs the Norton delivers truly awesome acceleration by road bike standards, especially in Race mode. I spent most of the day in Road, though, which provided controlled but still responsive acceleration, without, however, the kind of sharp pick-up from a closed throttle that spoils your riding enjoyment. Race mode response was considerably more vivid, and to be quite honest owners should just read the label and keep that for track days – Road mode is plenty good enough for enjoying the Norton V4.
High spec performance
Each variant has a different chassis design, but with the V4 engine acting in each case as a fully stressed component, with the limited edition V4-SS featuring a hand-polished (taking 26 hours!), hand-built aluminium twin-tube frame based on the SG5 TT-racer’s chassis, and a single-sided aluminium swingarm weighing just 3.1kg after being machined down from a single 70kg billet, whereas the series-production V4-RR features a cast aluminium chassis and swingarm. The two bikes share a common fully adjustable chassis geometry format developed on Norton’s Isle of Man TT racebikes, with both head angle and swingarm pivot capable of adjustment. Each has a 1430mm wheelbase, a 570mm long swingarm for extra traction, and a stock 23.9º rake for its 43mm Öhlins NIX30 fork, with a TTX-GP rear monoshock specially designed by Öhlins for the Norton V4.
The Brembo brake package features twin 330mm fully floating front discs gripped by lightweight M50 Monobloc radial calipers, with a single 245mm rear disc. A choice of seven-spoke BST carbon wheels and OZ forged aluminium wheels are fitted on offer depending on the colour scheme chosen, shod with grippy Dunlop Sportmax GP Racer D212 tyres – the rear one a 200/55-17. Claimed dry weight is
179kg.
The V4-SS is a torquey, powerful, but totally rideable express – and it has the Union Jack on the seat tail, too. In fact, the 1200 V4-SS would be too much motorcycle for certain kinds of roads without the electronic assistance provided by the six-axis Bosch IMU/Inertial Measurement Unit to give the rider better control of this 200bhp+ racer with lights, using one of the most advanced systems available which features traction control, engine braking strategies, launch control and cruise control, plus a data logging system for use on the track, as well as an anti-wheelie programme – switchable, of course.
A full-colour, 7-inch, high-definition TFT touch-screen dash monitors proceedings as well as giving access to the electronics, with a rear-view camera displaying the view behind on a portion of the screen, though the carbon fibre mirrors are there as backup to satisfy EU regs.
It’s worth mentioning that the overall build quality of 001/200 was literally superlative, and despite having clocked up heaps of miles in the hands of Stuart Garner and others, it’s still achingly desirable – it wears the miles well.
It also handles superlatively, too, with the fully adjustable Öhlins fork especially well set up, delivering great feedback from the front Dunlop that allows you to take full advantage of the Norton’s slightly improbable appetite for turn speed – improbable, because with such a meaty motor, you practically don’t expect that it would steer as sweetly as it does. It especially holds a relatively tight line very well if you’re taking a fast sweeping turn at speed, while the 72º V4 format has allowed Skinner to compact the mass of the motorcycle as a whole and positioned it centrally in the wheelbase.
This, in turn, makes it steer well too, which was particularly noticeable in a series of very tight S-bends just outside Warwick, where despite being a 1200cc megabike, the Norton just flicked from side to side like a Supersport 600.
Exquisite handling
Even with that mega-grunty engine with its eagerness to rev, and the meaty spread of torque, this is not a point and squirt device, but a finehandling package which belies initial expectations.
Because of all that torque and the just-right steering geometry, I could take most corners which I already knew well from riding other bikes there in a gear higher than them aboard the Norton. It’s superforgiving, too – regular readers will know that I don’t usually boast about riding exploits, but I twice got greedy about cranking the V4-SS over to max out turn speed, only to feel a front end slide coming almost before it had happened, so that I was able to save it both times with my knee on the floor, before resuming normal service. There’s outstanding feedback from the chassis, which seems tuned to have just the right degree of flex to let it talk to you. Simon Skinner deserves huge credit for having designed this exquisite-handling bike.
Riding it will always be An Event for the lucky owner, because not only does it look the business, it also sounds wonderful, and handles beautifully. Cheap at the price, if you’re fortunate enough to be able to afford one.
And that as much as anything else is the thing I came away most impressed with after my day aboard the fastest and most powerful all-British motorcycle yet built with a licence plate and a horn. It seems literally incredible that a company which until now had never built anything more exotic than an air-cooled 961cc 80bhp pushrod twin could have created this phenomenal motorcycle, which bears comparison with anything else in the marketplace today, no matter how potent and beautifully styled. It would already have been remarkable if Stuart Garner had commissioned the 1200 V4-SS from an outside supplier like Ricardo – as many famous European manufacturers already do. But to have entirely conceived, engineered, developed, styled and manufactured this fabulous motorcycle in-house at Norton, which by its very existence has elbowed aside brands like Ducati, BMW and Aprilia to clear a place for Norton at motorcycling’s top table, is literally incredible – but they did.
Oh – and please don’t think this assessment represents a furious wave of that flag on the side of my helmet.
Ok, I was the lucky one to have the first full test of the Norton V4-SS on British roads, but I know that when others after me get the chance to ride this British 1200 V4, their opinion will be the same. I freely admit I never saw this coming – but neither did the rest of the motorcycle world. Compliments to all concerned at Norton for creating this wonderful motorcycle, which is truly worthy of that glorious name on its flanks.