Norton NRV588

Norton NRV588 - Rotary Revival Riding The NRV588The Norton Rotary Reborn It's been 20 years since the rotary engine invented by German engineer Felix Wankel back in 1924 made its motorcycle roadracing debut in 1987.

Powering the racebikes of the resurgent Norton factory, the rotary's then-superior performance led to eight years of competition that resulted in successive British roadrace titles, points-scoring GP finishes and victory in the Isle of Man TT against the top superbikes of the day. The fact that each Wankel engine cylinder has only three moving parts that simply rotate-compared with myriad moving pieces in a conventional four-stroke piston engine, many of which run at incredibly high velocities only to stop dead a couple of hundred times a second-makes this a plausibly more efficient mechanical solution. Admittedly, the thorny issue of the bike's exact engine capacity was always a matter of controversy.

 

The Norton NRV588 has no such problem. For example, compared with Steve Hislop's TT-winning ABUS Norton, which had a nice midrange but was definitely peaky in terms of power delivery, the new bike feels like it's powered by an extremely potent electric motor. There's a huge range of seamless, linear power from 3000 rpm all the way up to the 11,500-rpm rev limiter.

Throttle response is crisp without being abrupt, a welcome trait considering the NRV's high power output and light weight. The 2D LCD dash is hard to read because of the lack of contrast in daylight and the smallish numbers, and the engine is so smooth that you have no sense of feel that it's time to shift. This caused me to bump into the rev limiter often; a bright shift light would help here. The excellent low-end torque meant that driving out of the tight turns could be done in second gear-no need for first gear in the separate six-speed Yamaha OW01 gearbox with belt primary drive.