Very interesting…

This showed up as a Facebook release by Norton in the UK recently:

Norton motorcycles announce ‘Design & Licence’ agreement with Zhongshen manufacturing of Chongqing, China.

Norton and Zhongshen have entered into a 20 year Design and Licence agreement over an all new 650cc twin engine. The 650cc twin engine jointly engineered and developed by Norton and Ricardo has been specifically designed to the requirements of Zhongshen and will be Euro 4 compliant. This enables Zhongshen to meet current and future emissions regulations, clearly an important step for Zhongshen and enables them to continue their phenomenal growth in the global motorcycle market.

The engine and its’ IP developed by Norton is specific and exclusive to Zhongshen and it is expected the engine will be produced under the ‘Zhongshen’ or ‘Cyclone’ brands.

The value of the deal is to remain private, but the initial consideration paid to Norton is in the millions of dollars with an ongoing royalty on each engine produced. The agreement is for a 20 year term, last year Zhongshen produced around 4 million engines.

Norton CEO, Stuart Garner commented; “It’s a great endorsement of our new 650cc engine platform and shows the high level of engineering expertise we have here at Norton. Working with Zhongshen going forwards will enable them to deliver high quality low emission engines compliant to current global standards. The commercialisation of our IP is a key area for Norton and we will be investing the substantial revenue received back into our skills, training and engineering capability, thus ensuring long term sustainability to our British made Norton motorcycles here in the UK.”

Please note; Norton will continue to hand make ALL of its’ own Norton engines here in the UK at its’ Donington Hall factory.

Interesting, but I have not a clue what it all means.  Other than the italics, what you’re reading above is exactly as it appeared on that most authoritative of all sources, Facebook (sarcasm intended), complete with the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization errors exactly as they appeared on Facebook.

What it sounds like is that Norton sold a 650cc engine design to Zongshen.  I wouldn’t hold my breath on seeing a 650cc engine from Zongshen in the near- or mid-term (nor would I hold my breath, for that matter, on seeing the 450cc RX4 any time soon).   Zongshen is clearly laying the groundwork for larger displacement engines, but as I’ve told everyone, it’s not anything we’re going to see this year or next.  As we learn more, we’ll share it with you here on the CSC blog.

Me?  I’m going to sit back and watch the keyboard commandos speculate on the above.  I’m a bit leery of the report’s accuracy (I have to wonder about a news release that doesn’t even spell Zongshen correctly).  It will be fun to read the inevitable internet forum comments (I’ll add my own pertaining to the engine’s super-deep sump and forward-facing oil filter).  I’ll do that for just a little while, and then I’m going to go for a motorcycle ride.  On my 250cc RX3.