Zhongshan 650cc bike on the way.

[prince666]

norton_650.jpg



When news broke that Norton had sold the design for their 650cc parallel-twin engine to Chinese firm Zongshen, the reaction was mixed. Some people said it would be good for the business, while others were worried that the Norton brand would be watered down. We spoke to CEO Stuart Garner to find out just what the deal is and why they’ve done it.

“Well we’ve got all the pub experts jumping on and saying we’ve sold out to China, which is absolutely not the case,” says Garner. “It’s actually the reverse. We’ve been developing the 650cc platform for ourselves and after speaking to Zongshen, we’ve completely separately developed a low performance engine. The engine is designed to be cheap and mass-produced, with use only in the Asian region or perhaps South America… This engine and bike are not coming to Europe.”

“It’s a 100% different engine that won’t even be branded Norton. We’ve just licensed the right to use that engine to Zongshen, which will give them Euro 4 compliance. It’s become very important now because to secure trade deals with companies in Europe, these factories need to be homologated – Euro 4 has become the accepted global standard.”

So if the Zongshen engine is different to the Norton mill, what’s the deal with the new Norton?

“Even as far back as five years ago, we knew the superbike would be a V4, so that we could drop the two cylinders and produce a parallel twin,” adds Garner. “That will give us a very current and modern platform to renew the 961. That’s the reason why we made the V4 oversized to 1200cc, rather than the litre platform of our competitors. We can share pistons and just lengthen the stroke for the increased capacity, while they will share the same gearbox, clutch and valve gear.

“The 650 will be the entry-point Norton and will occupy the same space as the Triumph Thruxton or the Ducati Monster. It won’t be a big volume bike, as that’s just not our style, but it will almost certainly be our most popular bike.

“If anything the Zongshen deal has sped up the development of our 650cc motor because there was a strong commercial element to it, so we invested more resource than we would have done had there not been this deal. It’s a 20 year deal too, so going forward we get a royalty for every 650 engine they make and last year they made 4 million engines. It means we now have a stable future for the business that allows us to invest and develop even more models.”

Source link.....http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2...-650-zongshen/

So what does this all mean?

Surely Zongshan will Manufacture a new bike for this engine.
What design it will be, my guess it will be along the lines of an ADV bike again.

The important point is because of the low cost, how bad will the engine be.

On a side note keep your eyes & ears open about CFmoto some very big news will be announced shortly.
Am I told it will be bigger news than the KTM/CFmoto partnership?
So that should be big news with some people from MCM menbers daunting what there are told.lol