Sam & the Norton Kneeler
The ageless Sammy Miller with one of the most interesting machines in his museum, the Norton Kneeler, also known as 'The Silver Fish'. Sam is holding a Castrol advertisement celebrating all the records broken by Norton at Montlhéry in September 1953, including a new world record of averaging 133mph for a whole hour. Not bad for a single cylinder, air-cooled, normally aspirated 500cc machine! This bike also broke the lap record at the North West 200 circuit and was ridden in practice at the Isle of Man TT the same year.
I wrote the Norton Kneeler into the script of the Top Gear FF episode to demonstrate both the power of good aerodynamics and also to juxtapose it with all the Feet First machines we'd assembled, as the most extreme example of a 'Head First' riding position. It was great to have Sammy on the programme actually riding the machine, along with the much older Neracar from his museum, which is also in this folder. PNB
The first half of that ten minute FF feature on Top Gear, broadcast in April 1988, showed a host of FFs ancient and modern, and can still be seen on YouTube, here:
https://tinyurl.com/ybn3sawz
There is also a page of bikeweb.com devoted to still photos taken during the filming at Wroughton, including some of both the Norton and the Neracar, here:
http://bikeweb.com/node/1635
Photo: © Paul Blezard 2016