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Kinetic Bringing Norton Motorcycles to India

Siddharth Sharma ,

Kinetic Engineering was once dominating the Indian scooter market before the Honda Activa came along. Now, the company is focussing on marketing premium brands like MV Agusta in the Indian market.

Another iconic motorcycle brand, Norton has partnered with Kinetic to bring their motorcycles to India. But, this deal is slightly different from the MV Agusta deal as Ajinkya Firodia Managing Director, Kinetic Engineering said that they signed a joint venture with Norton to create a new brand – Kinetic Norton Motorcycles, which will manufacture and sell motorcycles in India and rest of Asia. The official confirmation of this joint-venture will be further conveyed on 15th November 2017 at a press conference in Delhi.

 

What are the plans?

Kinetic Norton motorcycles will hit the Indian market in 2018 and the first two models on the list are Norton Dominator and the Norton Commando. The company plans to import the motorcycles via CBU (completely built unit) route initially but will changeover to CKD (completely knocked down) operations later on. Both the motorcycles, Dominator and the Commando were displayed at the EICMA 2017. Previously, we have also heard reports about Mahindra partnering with Norton, but there is no development news on that yet. Here’s another type of retro bike you should checkout: Triumph Bonneville Bobber

Norton Dominator

More about the Motorcycles

Norton Dominator and the Norton Commando, both fit into the cafe racer category of motorcycles. Both feature a fuel-injected 961cc oil cooled parallel twin engine that develops 80PS of power and 90 Nm of peak torque. The engine is coupled to a 5-Speed transmission.

Norton Commando

The suspension components on the Norton Dominator consists of 43mm Black-line Ohlins forks at the front and Ohlins TTX 36 mono shock at the rear. Norton Commando shares the same 43mm Black-line Ohlins Forks but gets Ohlins twin shocks at the rear instead of monoshock.

The stopping power on both the bikes comes from Brembo 320mm Dual discs with Brembo 4-piston monobloc calipers at the front and a 220mm single disc with brembo 2-piston caliper with at the rear.

Since retro is the theme here, Royal Enfield will also bring its 650cc models- Interceptor and Continental GT 650 (click to read).

Norton Commando first look-

Siddharth Sharma
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Siddharth Sharma

Siddharth has always been passionate about Cars and Bikes. He was the kind of kid that always had the latest Auto magazine in his school bag. He had this dream- to become a professional racecar driver. Finally, in 2012 he found himself racing as a rookie driver in the Polo R Cup national racing championship. Over time he had to readjust the sail and get into automotive journalism to continue enjoying machines on wheels.