How a crooked accountant triggered Norton’s rotary glory
º One of Norton’s brightest periods came in the late 1980s and early 1990s when their water-cooled rotaries dominated British racing. Painted in the oh-so-cool black and gold of JPS, the Nortons of Steve Spray and Trevor Nation didn’t just win British Superbike races, they adorned the bedroom walls of the next generation of motorcycle buyers. Suddenly Norton were seen as innovative and exciting. Remarkably, this success stemmed from the brain of just one man: Brian Crighton. A self-taught engineer and ex-british championshipwinning racer, he was happily running a Honda dealership north of Birmingham in the early 1980s and had no particular interest in Norton or its over-heating air-cooled rotaries. But then disaster struck. ‘I did really well with the dealership,’ says Brian. ‘But I didn’t enjoy the paperwork side of the operation, so I got an accountant in and he stole so much money from the business that we had to close in 1983. He got put in prison for nine months, but I lost my shop and Honda made me bankrupt and so my wife, kids and I got kicked out of our house too. I wasn’t too chuffed with Honda. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to beat them so much later on.’
It was a desperate time for Brian, but then a mate called Ted Shaw, who worked in Norton’s service department, gave him a go on a prototype twin rotor Norton. ‘I thought it was fantastic and I said to Ted, “Bloody hell, you’ve got to get me a job there”.’ By sheer fluke, there was a job going and Brian ended up servicing the rotary police bikes. While he was there, Norton moved to water-cooling, which got Brian thinking. ‘At the time they were doing about 85bhp, and I knew I could get more power out of it. I kept saying to [Norton boss] Dennis Austin, “I’m sure I can get 120bhp out of one of these engines,” but he wasn’t interested. There was a bike that had been lying in the corner for a long time and I said to Dennis, “if you let me have this old police bike, I’ll work on it after hours. Anything that needs bought, I’ll buy myself – it won’t cost you anything.” He agreed so I took the engine.’ Besides porting it, Brian changed the motor’s architecture, drawing air through the middle which cooled the motor and improved airflow to the carbs. It was a radical masterstroke: ‘The very first dyno test run I did one night – and I still can’t quite believe it – made 120bhp.’ After much persuasion, Dennis Austin gave in to Brian’s Brummy charms and allowed him to build a prototype which clocked 170mph at MIRA. But amazingly, Austin still wouldn’t let Brian build a race bike, so he resigned – a big deal, as he was Norton’s Chief Engineer by then. Eventually Austin realised the error of their ways and asked Brian to come back. He agreed, on one condition: they had to let him build a race bike…
‘Suddenly Norton were innovative and exciting’