£38,250 for F1
While the Norton name and company assets were being sold for £17 million someone else was buying an unused Wankel sports bike for a lot less
The COVID-19 crisis meant that H&H Auctioneers sale at the National Motorcycle Museum on 7 April was held behind closed doors, with bids coming in by internet and phone. That didn’t stop someone spending £38,250 to acquire this 1990 Norton F1, or from 70% of the 200+ lots finding new homes.
With styling by industrial designers Seymour Powell, an aluminium frame by Spondon, top quality components and the black, silver and gold paint job that came along with the pedigree of the John Player sponsored race bikes the F1 looks great. A twin rotor Wankel engine sounds like nothing else, delivers smooth power, but 588cc means that there’s just 94bhp. When new it would have cost £12,700 (£29,000 in today’s money), which was more than a Honda RC30. Apparently just 140 of the F1 were made before a cheaper, and less highly specified, F1 Sport version was introduced in 1992. But even fewer of the Sports had been made when Norton suffered another of its periodic financial spasms and production stopped in 1994.
‘It’s gone from one collector to another,’ said H&H’S Motorcycle Specialist Mark Bryan, ‘and it’ll probably never get ridden. Having never been registered then using it would devalue it, but what a thing to sit in your living room.’
The Norton sold within the auctioneer’s guide price of £35,000£40,000, so are values of all bikes from that era now on the rise? ‘It’s 30 years old, so people who remember them new are now getting toward retirement and their kids have left home. Certainly stuff from the 1970s is doing very well.’ says Bryan. ‘Conversely, many 1940s and 50s bikes are getting harder to sell, unless they’re a Vincent.’