Britbike forum Forums General discussion The Rod and Tappet Seen in passing.

British Motorcycle Icon Norton Roars Back to Life With 100M Pound Investment

https://jalopnik.com/british-motorcycle-icon-norton-roars-back-to-life-with-1848881678

NORTON: More lives than a cat, and most of them short.

VERY old news.

TVS is a worldwide player with VERY deep pockets, and proven profitability using their own money.

It will go well, regardless of what the naysayers want to say about new Nortons not being British.

Well, you know, there are "People Following the Crowd and Cheering" and then there are "Naysayers". I've been both, because one is not 'better' than the other when it comes to motorcycles ....

Lannis

SMELLS
Assuming they £ 10,000 gross profi per bike , and that is very doubful at th estimated output of 8,000 bikes a year and both the production & subsequent sales at that level as again highly doubtful it will take 1200 years to recoup the £ 100,000,000 invested .
Considering that the mystique of the Norton name only exists in a handful of english Speaking countries and nearly all of them have pledged to ban the sales of all petrol powered engined vehicles in the next 20 years , it just does not make the slightest bit of sence .
Same story as the new BSA's but at least the BSA name is known through out SE Asia as there are a lot of ex WWII WM20's still in daily use in SE Asia.

Norton is only one facet of the TVS "empire", a very well-to-do and profitable concern.

It's quite likely those numbers are totally screwy; but in any case, TVS will make this project profitable, and whatever they invest will have a ROI they can handle.

A hunderd million pounds would make me pretty perky too.

Still smells funny Paul
You don't run a profitable manufacturing empire by taking on a project that has no chance of ever turning a profit .
This has been born out by the previous atempt to reaunch Norton
Even if the £ 100,000,000 was a 10 times exageration you ar still looking at a payback period of 120 years .
very few businesses would touch anything that has a longer pay back than 10 years.
Look at all of the transport companies Mahindra has bought then dumped a few years latter on when they realized it could never turn a profit sufficient to repay the capital cost .
So unless some one on the TVS is an ardent Norton fanatic and has been pullion one over the rest of the board or it has been bought to shuffle money arounf the planet to play the money market or avoid tax or both .

That may be it. I believe it is a large family, and they recently divided duties/directions of each asset to the individual family members. At least it is my understanding that one family member is heading the Norton project.

I fully believe they will make it work, they are more akin to John Bloor than Stuart the Rip-Off.

With 100 million quids, even Stuart Garner would have made Norton fly !!!

You could see him scratching around for funds about right from the get-go.
Grand Plans, and next to no moolah to do it with ....

Don't they say it takes about 2 $billions+ to get a new car to market these days.
So even that 100 millions is small beer .. ?
Cars have more to them, of course.

To make a go they will probably go the route of modern Triumph and BSA. R&D in the UK, manufacture in Asia.

You've mucked up those pesky zeros again, Trev.

£10,000/bike x 8,000 bikes is £80,000,000/yr. A nice little earner, as Arthur Daley would have said.

Even at a margin of £1,000 / bike, that's still an 8% return.

Agreed, though, that the volumes are likely to be much lower early in the piece, which brings the NPV down considerably.