This Absurdly Rare Motorcycle You’ve Never Heard Of Has An Engine You’d Least Expect

Throughout history, numerous companies and individuals have attempted to reinvent the motorcycle. Some have experimented with diesel engines while others tried to make motorcycles that were like cars. Norton Motorcycles was among a handful of manufacturers that all tried, and failed, to cram rotary power into motorcycles. One of those bikes has come up for sale. This Norton F1 is a weird experiment into a new kind of motorcycle, and it’s so rare it’s going to be a while before you see another.

This 1990 Norton F1 used to be a museum piece at the UK’s National Motorcycle Museum, but now it’s up for grabs for anyone in the world to buy. Next month, it’ll be featured in the Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show 2024 by Iconic Auctioneers in the UK. The bike is one of just 140 made over the course of a couple of years, so who knows when we’ll see another.

If you can conjure up the funds to bring this one home, you’ll own a rare piece of history from an era when motorcycle manufacturers thought they could make Wankel engines work on two wheels.

Everyone Wanted That Wankel

NSU-licensed rotary engines went off in an impressive number of directions. Curtiss-Wright got a license from NSU and put some larger rotary engines to work in flight testing. General Motors wanted to use the rotary for both the economical Vega and the sporty Corvette, where it would have been placed in a mid-rear layout. A longer non-exhaustive list of companies that experimented with rotary power included AMC, Suzuki, Motorrad Zschopau (IFA/MZ), Citroën, Daimler-Benz, Honda, Kawasaki, AvtoVAZ, Ford, Yamaha, and Van Veen. (And of course, Mazda is the obvious one we all know about).

Motorcycle manufacturers were just as drawn to rotaries as carmakers, and they attempted to make their own Dorito bikes. The most famous rotary motorcycle is probably the Suzuki RE-5, which allegedly sold around 6,000 units between 1974 and 1976.

Hercules also thought the rotary engine was going to be the future of motorcycling. When the Hercules W-2000 beat the Suzuki RE-5 to market in 1974, the crowd went mild. Kawasaki also toyed with rotary power in 1972 with the Kawasaki X99 RCE, but that never made it to production. Yamaha also did its own rotary prototype with the Yamaha RZ201, and that also didn’t go on sale, either.

One by one, all of these companies eventually found out that rotaries weren’t exactly the magic dream engines they thought they were. As the New York Times reported in 1977, General Motors canceled its rotary program after the engine failed to “demonstrate the potential for low emissions levels and fuel economy equal to those of current reciprocating piston engines.”

This warning from General Motors didn’t dissuade a few manufacturers. Mazda has famously embraced the rotary engine and hasn’t even given up on the technology in today’s world of electric vehicles. One of the other manufacturers to ignore GM’s cry was Norton Motorcycles and Van Veen. The latter built just 38 rotary motorcycles between 1978 and 1981. Norton technically had better luck.

Norton Bets On Rotaries

As the Vintagent writes, BSA was another manufacturer that felt that rotary power was the future, and in 1969, it hired young engineer David Garside to guide it through the new tech. Maybe BSA could have something new to use against the flood of Japanese motorcycles hitting the UK at the time. BSA’s market research suggested that the public would be interested in a rotary-powered bike if it was fast. Garside’s team started with a Fichtel & Sachs KM914 single rotor snowmobile Wankel that made all of 18 HP.

According to the Norton Owners Club, Garside’s major breakthrough came from major changes to the engine’s intake and carburetor position. Rotary engines run hot and manufacturers initially didn’t know how to deal with that. Sachs kept engines cool by injecting incoming air through the Wankel’s rotor. This allowed the engine to run cool enough, but heated up the air so hot that the Sachs engine lost power.

Garside redesigned the Sachs engine to still use air to cool the rotor, but the air then went through a plenum chamber to cool down significantly, restoring the power lost in the previous design. This, along moving the carburetor to a new position which allowed for further cooling through evaporation, pumped power up to 32 HP. Later, Garside, with the help of Edward Turner protogé Bert Hopwood, would add a second rotor to the modded Sachs engine, adding power and upping displacement from 294cc to 588cc.

At first, Garside’s experiments were bolted into existing frames such as the BSA Starfire and the Triumph Bandit. But as development continued, so did the rest of the motorcycle. Eventually, rotary prototypes were seen with a new chassis with oil-filled tubes and looking more polished with integrated airboxes. As the Vintagent writes, Garside’s rotary development survived the tumultuous downfall of BSA and its merger with Norton. By 1978, Norton now had the rotary bike, and the P42 was slated to go into production. Journalists got to ride the new machine and brochures were printed, but then the motorcycle didn’t go on sale.

It would take until 1984 for Norton to put its rotary motorcycle into production, but it wouldn’t be sold to the public. Instead, it was branded as the Interpol 2 and sold to police forces. In case you were wondering, the first Norton Interpol police bike was based on the piston-powered Commando.

The Interpol 2 featured a 588cc air-cooled twin-rotor Wankel making a healthy 85 HP and just 350 examples were made. The Interpol 2 was a police bike but also a testbed. If BSA/Norton’s rotary could survive police duty, it would have no problem getting regular people to work. Unfortunately, as Web Bike World writes, the Interpol 2 suffered from overheating and blown rotor seals, problems that plagued Wankels sold by a number of brands.

Still, Norton didn’t want to give up the rotary dream. This was going to be the engine to set it apart from its rivals. Norton’s rotary would succeed where other motorcycle rotaries failed. Norton ordered the development of a water-cooled rotary to solve the existing engine’s overheating problems, and then Norton was sold once again.

As Rider Magazine wrote, Norton’s then-new owner wasn’t really that interested in fixing the cooling problem. Instead, Norton lifted the air-cooled engine out of the Interpol 2 and put it into the 1987 Classic, a motorcycle sold to the public in a limited run of just 100 units.

Norton would eventually get around to upgrading the cooling of its rotary engine and in 1988, the Norton Commander was unleashed into the world. This bike still featured a 588cc twin-rotor Wankel, but now it was water-cooled. It made 85 HP in this guise and Norton covered up all of the ugly plumbing with extensive fairings. Reportedly, the Commander was an unimpressive bike with an interesting engine. It couldn’t corner like a sportbike and it wasn’t much of a looker, but it was reliable. Unfortunately, its 7,600-pound price meant just 253 units were sold between 1988 and 1992.

Rotary Sportbike

That brings us to the beauty we see here today, the pièce de résistance of Norton’s rotary development, the F1.

According to Hagerty, engineer Brian Crighton and a team of employees began building a racing machine in secret. They took the Classic’s air-cooled rotary, souped it up, and put it in a chopped-down frame. The bike did 170 mph and that was enough to convince Norton brass to put an official rubber stamp on making a rotary racing machine. Now with official funding, the team was able to crank the power up to 133 HP and Spondon Engineering provided an advanced aluminum frame for even more weight savings.

Then, something amazing happened. Norton’s RCW588 rotary racing bike, which was developed on a shoestring budget, started beating the better-funded competition, from Norton Motorcycles:

When it took third place in its club race debut at Darley Moor, the factory knew Crighton had built something special.

In 1988 the bike started winning national races with Steve Spray at the helm. JPS became the title sponsor for the 1989 season – the year Steve Spray won the British Formula One Championship and the 750cc Supercup Champion on the JPS-sponsored RCW588.

Success continued into the early nineties when Steve Hislop went above and beyond on his Abus Norton to defeat Carl Fogarty on his Yamaha and win the 1992 Isle of Man Senior TT – the first victory for a British bike in almost 30 years. It’s regarded as one of the greatest ever senior races to this day. Not long after in 1994, Ian Simpson matched Steve Spray’s British Superbike triumph on the Duckham’s-sponsored Norton completing two decades of success.

Norton celebrated its rotary racer’s success in 1990 with the launch of the F1, a street-going version of the racing bike. The F1 was a sportbike featuring a 588cc water-cooled twin-rotor Wankel making 94 HP. It sported a twin-spar aluminum frame, WP suspension, Brembo brakes, Michelin tires, and a five-speed transmission from the Yamaha FZR1000.

Reportedly, the Norton F1, which was offered in a John Player livery like the racing machines, was as quick as a Japanese 600 of the day, a reasonable 423-pound dry weight, and had a fun 145 mph top speed. However, the engine, despite being water-cooled, was still prone to overheating and the engine’s behavior was rough at low speeds. Even worse was the price of £12,670 (£30,442 today, or $39,541), which ensured only 140 examples found a home between 1990 and 1991.

Norton’s response to poor sales was the Norton F1 Sport, which cheaped out on components for a lower price. Even fewer of those sold and around 70 F1 Sports were sold before Norton finally gave up on rotary power.

Ultimately, rotary power went about the same way for Norton as it did with the motorcycle companies before it. But Norton kept making more and more rotary motorcycles even as people didn’t buy them. The company even supplied small rotary engines for unmanned aerial vehicles. But these ventures didn’t stop Norton from circling the drain.

This F1

However, time heals a lot of wounds. Norton’s rotary sportbike may have been a commercial failure that was prone to overheating, but now it can be your weird collectible. The 1990 Norton F1 up for grabs in the Iconic Sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show 2024 by Iconic Auctioneers is a cream puff.

Like all F1s, this motorcycle was built by hand at Shenstone and was given a wonder John Player livery and a Spondon aluminum frame. It has seemingly lived a pretty gentle life with five owners, one of them being the UK’s National Motorcycle Museum. The museum raffled off the motorcycle in 2016 with 6,254 miles to the fourth owner. The fifth owner and seller picked it up in 2018. Now it has all of 6,488 miles. So, this motorcycle hasn’t gone very far in its life.

Buying this bike will also get you its original brochure, manual, toolkit, and receipts for all of the work that has been done to it over the years. The auction house expects it to sell for between £30,000 ($38,967) and £35,000 ($45,462) before taxes, so don’t expect a bargain here. At the very least, you have until November 10 to get the money or enough willing friends to go in on the bike with you.

If you are the lucky one to buy this F1, you’ll be getting a motorcycle you’re unlikely to run into anywhere else. Sure, the F1 wasn’t the game-changing motorcycle Norton was banking on it to be, but as I can tell you from owning a rotary motorcycle, owning and riding a rotary bike is an experience unlike any other.

(Images: Iconic Auctioneers, unless otherwise noted.)