Kinetic to assemble Norton motorcycles by end of 2018

Kinetic group's Motoroyale has announced a joint venture with Britain's Norton Motorcycles. This venture was earlier revealed at the recently concluded EICMA 2017 Motorcycle Show at Milan where Ajinkya Firodia, Managing Director, Motoroyale, along with Stuart Garner, CEO Norton Motorcycles acknowledged the partnership.

Firodia openly admitted that both the companies agreed that rolling out motorcycles via the CBU route didn't make any sense. Therefore, only the initial batch in the first quarter will CBU versions, while the company will simultaneously set up CKD assembly line for the café racer and sports model, Commando and later followed by the Dominator. Both these bikes will be powered by a 79bhp 961cc engine with 90Nm of torque at 5,200RPM. These are expected towards the end of 2018. Kinetic later on plans to also launch variants like Commando 961 Sport; Commando 961 Café Racer; Dominator Sport and DomiRacer. Apart from this, Norton will work on developing a new range motorcycles and engine platforms, which will be made available to the JV in the subsequent years.

In this joint venture, Kinetic has 51 per cent majority ownership and plan to assemble and operate of Kinetic Motoroyale's Ahmednagar plant, near Pune, Maharashtra, which holds a capacity of assembling 30,000 units annually. Therefore, Kinectic plans to not only assemble and sell motorcycles here in India but also export them to the ASEAN market.