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This piece on the story of how Norton Villiers and Triumph began the downhill slope to collapse. Taken from the On Two Wheels Motorcycle vol 5 by Orbis London.
The basic troubles seemed to have stared back in 1956, when Norton was bought by Associated Motorcycles Ltd which itself went into liquidation in 1966. The Manganese Bronze Company, headed by Dennis Poore, came to the rescue, and bought the Norton name with other assets and developed the resultant Norton Villiers Ltd company into a going concern.
The financial problems of the BSA/Triumph group in 1971/2 caused quite a stir, however in the autumn of 1972, Mr Poore, Chairman of Norton Villiers Ltd, was called the the industrial development unit of the department of trade and industry, which had been recently formed to administer the new industry Act, and was told some disturbing news. He was told that