Twin Twins 2020 NORTON ATLAS 650 NOMAD & RANGER
WHAT’S THE STORY?
Norton’s decade-long ride down the comeback trail under the ownership of Stuart Garner is now reaching fruition, with production commencing before the end of this year of the historic British marque’s twin Twins – its 650cc parallel-twin Atlas range.
Launched at the Birmingham NEC Show almost a year ago and initially available in Nomad and Ranger street scrambler versions, the Ranger is more decidedly dual-purpose than the Nomad. Priced at the upper end of the middleweight market, the Nomad should retail at £9995 on the road, with the Ranger at £11,995. Compare this to, for example, a Kawasaki Versys 650GT at £8649, these two all-new motorcycles presage what Garner promises will be a constantly expanding range of entry-level models in the Norton range – all without in any way impacting on the company’s current air/oil-cooled Commando 961 retro twin, which continues in production in Euro 4-compliant form alongside its 1200 V4 Superbike family, which entered production a year ago.
The Atlas duo are direct spin-offs from those 1200 V4 models. The liquid-cooled, eight-valve, dohc parallel twin, wet-sump motor is common to both versions and is essentially representing the front cylinder bank of the 72° V4 engine, with the same chain camshaft drive up the left side of the Atlas motor, which is fitted with a 270° crank; common to all parallel twins, thanks to its balance. This has been stroked slightly to obtain a full 650cc, so that instead of the V4’s 82 x 56.8mm format the Atlas engine now measures 82 x 61.5mm, in which guise it delivers the same 84bhp at 11,000rpm at the crank (vs. 64bhp on the Versys) on each model,
