In 2009, I decided to find a classic British motorcycle to restore. I had spent the last four years flying airplanes in Northern Canada and was just given the opportunity to move back to my home city of Vancouver at the age of 24. I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands and no hobbies to occupy myself. My dad had restored a 1960 Austin Healey my whole childhood and I thought that maybe he’d be interested in restoring a motorcycle with me as a nice father and son thing. He’d had a Triumph Bonneville and a BSA Lightning in the late 1960s so it was obvious that this would be a British bike. I liked the Bonnevilles and BSAs, but nothing was sexier to me than a Norton Commando… So where would I find one?
I joined a British Motorcycle Owners’ Club (BMOC) to help navigate this community. My dad came with me which was good, because I stood out as the youngest person by 40 years. Before my first meeting even started I found the club president had a love for Nortons and he even joked about selling me one. I hounded him again after the meeting and he agreed to sell it to me for $2500. Everything was going according to plan!
This 1974 Norton Commando 850 had 11,000 miles on it and had been inert since 1979 where it suffered an accident; the frame was bent and it didn’t have the original tank. It came with a picture of two Nortons in the Rocky Mountains – the story goes that two friends bought them new and rode from Toronto to Vancouver with all of their belongings. This was a romantic story indeed. I was so overwhelmed when I brought my Commando home that I could only sit and stare at it, imagining what it would have been like to ride this bike in the 1970s, and what had happened to the original owner who had crashed it 30 years ago.
This story is from the February 2021 edition of The Classic MotorCycle.
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This story is from the February 2021 edition of The Classic MotorCycle.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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