If you like your motorcycles with low handlebars in serious need of rehabilitation, you’ll wish you had been the one to buy the 1960 Norton that sold for a pittance at a British auction on Saturday.
The ES2/Model 77, bought for just £TK ($TK) at the Banbury Run Sale in Oxford, is an original in a world of copies, a throwback to the early days of motorcycle racing.
Like orange and blue Gulf Livery, the café racer motorcycle is a decades-old design that looks good enough to maintain its popularity in modern times. The term refers to a special style of rider as well as motorcycle, both of which became prominent in the late 1950s and 1960s in the United Kingdom. Owners would race their bikes by sprinting from one coffee shop to another.
Café racers are best over short distances, given that riding one requires hunching into an uncomfortable position with your sternum over the gas tank. Most of the bikes made or altered to fit the look were British, made by Triumph, BSA, and Norton. Owners whose bikes could top 100 mph became members of the Ton Up Club, helping create a market for performance aftermarket parts.
Despite the impractical ergonomics, café racers have maintained their look and popularity, albeit with safety innovations like tubed tires and electric starters. These bikes, then as now, have a few defining features that separate them from standard classics like the Triumph Bonneville or Moto Guzzi V7.
The key feature is the swept-in handlebars, which let riders flatten themselves over the tank to reduce wind resistance and increase speed. The bikes have a compact, balanced design, with a flat horizontal line running along the body’s length.
Japanese manufacturers started making their own café racers in the 1970s, but the British marques were the true originals. That brings us to the dust-covered Norton that sold on Saturday. Norton was founded in 1898, well before the first café racers were built, and its bikes were a presence in the early days of two-wheeled racing, including the first ever Isle of Man TT. When World War II arrived, the British brand produced over 100,000 bikes for the war effort.
This particular Norton hit the road right at the first wave of café racer culture. It’s dated to 1960 with its Model 77 twin-cylinder engine set inside a Featherbed ES2 frame. It’s been sitting in storage and hasn’t turned over in more than ten years, which explains its junkyard-level estimated price of under $2,500. If you prefer a vintage open-face helmets and goggles to airbag-deploying race suits, that’s a steal.
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