For most of the 1950s and 60s, if you walked into a motorcycle dealership anywhere from Birmingham to California and asked for the fastest thing on two wheels, one name came up again and again — Norton. It builds the machine that wins at the very first Isle of Man TT in 1907, and then it simply refuses to lose. Ten Senior TTs between the two world wars. Seventy-eight of ninety-two Grand Prix races in one astonishing stretch of the 1930s. A racing record so complete the company's own advertising needs just one arrogant word: Unapproachable. Norton is the bike the racers ride and the bike the police chase on. But fast forward to 1977, and the great name has gone dark. The factories are closing. The workers are staging sit-ins. Norton is in receivership, its founder's dream sold off for scrap and shipped abroad. And the Japanese have taken everything. Total collapse. Now, there is a simple villain in this story. His name is Dennis Poore — the financier the British government backs to save the industry, the man who folds Norton into the doomed Norton Villiers Triumph. But the truth is more complicated — and more damning. The real mistake comes years before Poore ever arrives, made by the very men who love these machines most. Either way, what follows will become one of the most self-inflicted industrial collapses in British history.

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