How well are Nortons doing

[andy588tt]

Hi to you all With Mr Gardner crowing about how well he is doing I thought I would have a reality check? So if you want to be beaky check out this web address www.companycheck.co.uk Ride safeAndy

[FloridaMike]

Interesting site . . . as well as some interesting dynamics at work here.I sense a disturbance in the Force - some animosity between two people - which I don't know anything at all about and am not qualified to comment on, so I won't (Of course if someone wants to tell me what's going on, I'll certainly listen).As to what I *can* comment on, the reports to companycheck.co.uk are automatically suspect because one of the purposes of the accounting department is to minimize taxes. If you don't make any money, you won't pay tax, so it is worth your while to find ways to report that you didn't make any money. Furthermore, if you publicly show you're broke, you are less likely to get sued because opposing counsel will do an asset search and advise their client that it is not possible to get blood from a stone and advise them to forget about it (because if there's no blood, the lawyer won't get paid either).In fact, companies which pay low or no income tax "because they didn't make any money" often have significant assets, cash flows and yes, profits. An example here was General Electric, which two years ago didn't pay any income tax. Of course, everyone screamed in outrage (especially the Democrats), but if you look at it a little beyond the sound bites, GE paid a LOT of taxes. "Income tax" (which would show up on a US equivalent of companycheck.co.uk) just wasn't one of them, and would have been a VERY small portion of their total tax burden anyway. They paid real estate property taxes, employment taxes, utility taxes, state and local taxes, excise fees, license plates for their fleets of cars, city/county/state occupational licenses, the list of taxes GE did pay goes on evidently forever. (No affiliation, incidentally.)As to Norton, he may be doing very well indeed, or he may be a hollow shell at insolvency's door - but the report of one website (the site may be impartial, but it is based on self-reported information!) isn't reliable. I checked on two UK businesses I *know* are making money and have assets (I manage their USA branches, and I AM privvy to their accounting), both show up as broke or inactive, which I know isn't the case.Figures don't lie, but liars can sure figure!Best Regards,FloridaMike

[gripper]

While I'm not in a position to criticise Mr Garner, plenty of others can do that without too much provocation, he has spent considerable time and effort to make the Kenny Dreer Norton viable. There is virtually none of the KD bike in the present machine and converting the design and drawings to metric must have been an expensive ball-ache. Would I have persued a vertically split crankcase and a pushrod engine in this day and age? probably not, but then what do I know? It looks good and that is all most "motorcyclists" are interested in. I wonder how many of them have clocked up 10,000 miles yet.

[ZFD]

There is virtually none of the KD bike in the present machine

Kenny Dreer swears the current bike is 1:1 his machine bar the motor management. I can't say whether this is true but suspect he knows what he came up with a decade (!) ago.When we met exactly ten years ago- he was here in November or early December 2002- I told him his design had no merit, being very dated technically.My conclusion was "who needs this today?" I showed him a far more advanced concept that has since started production under a different trademark.Ten years on Dreer's design is even more dated.

[Nortonash]

I'm not sure what any of the figures show to be honest, Triumph made a loss for many years, at least on paper. I applaud Stuart Garner for what he has done, I interviewed him for a story a few years ago and was very impressed by his enthusiasm and desire to succeed. The problem is that here in the UK and unfortunately Australia anyone who rises above seems to become a target. I saw a Keeny Dreer bike alongside a 'Norton' and although they were superficially similar they were also very different and the latter was very much refined.