The Norton-Villiers-Triumph Motorcycle Factory in the USSR
It’s July 1974, and Norton Villiers Triumph (NVT) is fighting for its life. This last chance saloon has been set up out of what was left of the British motorcycle industry – the mighty BSA has collapsed, Triumph’s Meriden factory is slated for closure and Norton, with the Commando’s glory years behind it, is desperate for new capital. The British Government agrees to put some money in to save the industry, but only if these disparate parts merge under the leadership of Dennis Poore, boss of Norton.![](https://thevintagent.com/dev/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/From-Russia-With-Love-the-Vintagent-NVT-Ad-1.jpg)
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War & Peace
By this time of course, the Soviet Union was a major manufacturer of bikes, with a long history stretching back pre-revolutionary Russia. A few two- and three-wheelers were imported by individuals in Tsarist times, and in 1913 a project got underway to build a lightweight bike in Moscow though the outbreak of a revolution put a stop to that.
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Socialist Realism
Soviet bikes might have started off as basic transport, but the regime actually encouraged motorcycle sport, this being seen as a means of motivating the masses at home and winning prestige abroad. Speedway was very popular in the the USSR, with a successful national team, as was its offshooot of ice racing. Unlike speedway, the latter used spiked tyres and the same riding techniques as road racing, though if you came off, the flying spikes would have proved a hazard… Then there was ski racing, with skiers towed behind the bikes on snow – I can’t decide who was braver, the riders or the skiers. Motocross was popular (mud in summer, snow in winter) while the Soviet motoball team often won the European Championship. There was road racing too of course, and modified (even supercharged) versions of the BMW clones were raced, and in the mid-1960s one Soviet factory (Vostok) even developed its own 350 and 500cc DOHC four-cylinder racers, though their only podium place was a third at the 1965 East German GP.
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The British are Coming
So, back to circa 1974 and Norton Villiers Triumph, then surviving on its ageing pushrod twins and triples. It desperately needed a new generation of bikes to survive, but was just as desperately short of money to put them into production. Veteran industry designer Bert Hopwood had come up with what he called a modular range of singles, twins, triples, fours and even a V-5, but these would need about £20 million to put into production. Norton had its Challenge water-cooled 750 twin in development, but again that needed money to move forward.
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There was another change from the original Quadrant prototype. By the 1970s, sidecars were an eccentric sideline in the West, but in Russia they were still part of everyday transport. So the Russian Quadrant would be offered in sidecar form, not with the chair simply bolted onto a solo, but with its own integrated three-wheel chassis, car-type wheels and the choice of passenger or load-carrying space.
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The Aftermath
Alas, the Russian Quadrant never happened, and we don’t know why. The document may never even have made it over the Iron Curtain – who knows. Of NVT’s overseas schemes, that for an Iraqi factory scheme seems to have got furthest, envisaging a BSA B50-based bike, but that too faded away. As for the original Quadrant, when NVT was being closed down, Mike Jackson was tasked with selling off the various prototypes, and offered the four to Doug Hele (by then working for outboard manufacturer British Seagull) since it had been his baby. He didn’t want it, and in the end it was sold to Roy Richardson, then in the process of planning the National Motorcycle Museum. It’s still there, and whenever I see it, I can’t help but think of the Soviet motorcycle which might have been…
Sources: Apart from the NVT document, Colin Turbett’s ‘Motorcycles & Motorcycling in the USSR’ was an invaluable source of information. Published by Veloce Books, it covers USSR bikes from the 1930s up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, including sections on sport, military bikes and UK imports. (www.velocebooks.co.uk). Also ‘Norton Villiers Triumph’ by Brad Jones covers another neglected part of bike history (www.bsa1971.com). Finally, it’s long out of print, but ‘Military Motorcycles’ by David Ansell has loads of information, if you can find a copy online.
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The photo from the Irbit State Motorcycle Museum is, neither a M-73 nor a M-72, but rather a 1950 и7Д prototype, designed to allow IMZ to continue to make military motorcycles, instead of military manufacture being transferred to KMZ.
The 1948 M-35 is not an ИЖ (Izh), but rather a GMZ bike. (Gorkiy MZ) though the supercharged engine was designed and built by NAMI in Serpukhov.
The photo of the 1949 OHV is another GMZ bike and was an attempt by GMZ to remain in Gorkiy producing civilian motorcycles., and not be completely transferred to KMZ in Kiev, to manufacture military motorcycles.
The M-72 at IMZ was replaced by the M-72M in 1955/56. The M-72M was not replaced by the M-52, but was built alongside it. The M-72 production line was transferred to the PRC in 1957 as the Model 1957, and later the Chang Jiang M1
“There was a no-nonsense steel backbone frame and full enclosure for the final drive chain – perhaps a generation of Soviet mechanics brought up on shaft-drive Urals wouldn’t have been so hot on chain maintenance.” Considering there were 27 million chain driven IZH motorcycles – all I can say is “What an idiotic comment!”
Paul, thanks for getting this great Henshaw article into our cyber world. That’s what I love about the Vintagent, you guys are willing to go deep. You know I’m a Norton man through and through so I was fascinated by learning of these desperate final attempts to carry on with overseas manufacturing. Pity nothing ever came of it and Norton lurched on privately in it’s own devious ways Very sad current situation 45 years after the final MKlll’s
there is another sub-chapter of the Triumph quadrant story and ended up inexplicably in the US. As many know, Cliff “The Sandy Bandit” Majhor bought out ALL the British US distributors as each fell. Duarte, JoMo, TriCor, NVT etc, I have the dates as well. Many articles online about him. I knew “Uncle Cliffy” quite well and he was a treasured, albeit eccentric and at time offensive member of our local vintage clubs & local scene. I am proud I was able to save some little mementos from his reign of the British bike empire. As a dealer had a few famous outbursts at the annual dealer meetings on the Queen Mary. (Ridiculed Edward Turner, and told Dennis Poore he would die broke & alone, and crowed for years later “And I was right!”) But in the warehouse stashes of NOS nirvana and assorted oddities was a Bodged Quad 4 but actually had a Honda SOHC/4 in a Triumph Trident rolling chassis. Cliff told me many stories and often embellished but I pieced together that, Triumph had purchased a number of Honda CB750s and tested them, Some early ones blew up and the Asian threat was discounted, But when it became clear the treat was real the Tridents were rushed into production and the Quadrant was seen as a viable project, But the one I have was a lash up to evaluate modernising the Trident chassis for 4 cylinder bikes and seen many variations and testing criteria. There was a box of blown up Quadrant parts as well from Triumph parts. I wanted a letter from Cliff Documenting the history and he could not care less, Told me type what ever I wanted up and he would sign it. But, that was Cliff. I still have the bike as well as other momentos of the cycle hub empire. I wrote many stories on this as well as photos, some got fwded to cycle world and they came to town and wrote about Cliff, but I was told to bugger off. https://www.cycleworld.com/2015/07/30/mining-for-old-the-greatest-cache-of-vintage-motorcycle-parts-in-the-world/
I met Cliff only twice, but can confirm his status in the motorcycle world as you suggest. There’s clearly a story to be told about your Triumph/Honda lashup! Let’s talk.
“Here’s a group of Moscow riders in 1932 on a variety of machines. [Hockenheim Museum Archive]” I think the second motocyclist on the left is Robert Séxé the globe trotter on his Peugeot… He made a lot of journeys and races in Russia .
The picture come from Hockenheim museum because he was germanophile (a little bit two much during last war!) and had
many friends in Germany. I met him in the seventy’s, still using a 125 DKW.
Actually, the picture is in the Hockenheim Museum because Francois-Marie Dumas sold his archive to them! And he has an extensive Séxé archive…
Just came across this article, but as an (even more bizarre) aside, while trawling through the archive held by Solihull library I came across a very similar document, but covering the 350 Bandit/Fury. This had been rehashed as a 500 sidecar outfit with, as I remember it, a powered sidecar wheel. All the documents were in both English and Russian but what the final product would have been like, who knows? The couple of test riders I’ve talked to, who rode a Bandit, said that they were good bikes by the end, but rev-happy, so how they’d have performed lugging a sidecar……………………
I think BSA were in such desperate straits by then that any possibility for sales seemed like a good idea. If they had simply focussed on development…
Sirs, very interested in the relationship between Royal Enfield, and the USSR. I know that Russians purchased Royal Enfield motorcycles, and I suspect that they planned to reverse engineer them. See the Chinese DongHai A750 as one example. Is there anything out there regarding this subject? My bike was delivered new to Soviet Trade Delegation, in London, 1954. Thank you, Tom M.