AJS Stormer – Storm warning
The definition of ‘storm’ in the Oxford English Dictionary is: ‘A violent disturbance of the atmosphere’… or ‘A violent shower of missiles or blows’. And yet, to look at, the AJS ‘Stormer’ is anything but: the machine’s dainty, elegant lines hardly look capable of creating havoc of any variety.
The AJS Stormer went into production around 1968/1969. It had AJS branding, but was built by Norton-Villiers, which had acquired Associated Motorcycles (AMC) – which included AJS – a few years earlier. Mike Jackson, who was AJS’s European sales manager from 1969, said: “I was happy to be involved with the Stormer and in my view it is a very underrated bike…. It was designed by Bob Trigg, an ex-scrambles rider from the Midlands, who went on to work and design for Yamaha.”
But the Villiers Starmaker engine was the real star of the Stormer. Nick Brown – who runs AJS today and whose father, Fluff Brown, helped develop the Stormer – says: “In 1962, Norton-Villiers launched the Starmaker engine and it was a revelation.
It was something forwardthinking and new.
“In 1966 Villiers stopped the supply of engines for customers and their new idea was to build their own range of motorcycles using their own engine. So they looked through their portfolio of companies, which included AJS, and so for their new range of scramble bikes, they decided to use the AJS name.”
Nick’s father was instrumental in the development of that bike. “My dad was involved with the testing and development of the Cottons and through Cotton he then joined Villiers and became the competition manager at AJS, duly going on to test and develop what was to become the Stormer.”
Mike Jackson again: “It was just two years too late, really; we were the new boys on the block and it takes time to assimilate.”
Time wouldn’t wait, however, and the Stormer was taken out of production. “It only had a production life of about three or four years, which was short by most standards. But if it had come out two or three years earlier it would have knocked Greeves for six.”