Yeah newt, the new Nortons are being built at the Donnington Park racetrack outside of London.
A few months back I had the pleasure to talk with the new english owner of Norton, Stuart Garner, while he was in SoCal finishing up business related talks with Matt Capri, the owner of South Bay Triumph, and who will be Norton's distributor in the U.S.
Garner told me when he heard Kenny Dreer's operation was folding due to lack of future funding, he decided to try and purchase it and return it to England. Once he was able to do that, and indeed return Norton to its homeland, they took Dreer's basic design for the all new 961 Nortons and have been refining it, and do expect to have the first production models ready for Matt to start selling by March 2010.
Garner did send two 961 non-runners over to Matt a few weeks ago so he could show them at the Cycle World Int'l M/C Show in Long Beach CA, and according to Matt, they pre-sold 6 units at the show.
(and I have to admit that I would almost kill to own one of those bee-you-tee-ful babies TOO!!!)
