The Norton Commando promptly turned up in racing events, amongst the first being London dealer Vincent Davey running a team under the Gus Kuhn name with riders Dave Croxford and Mick Andrew.
[2] The 1969 Commando S was introduced fitted with a high-level left-side exhaust and a 2.5-imperial-gallon (11 L) petrol tank, primarily aimed at the export (US) market.
A Government subsidy allowed assembly to move to a factory at North Way, Andover, with an aircraft hangar on nearby Thruxton Airfield housing the Test Department.
The high performance Combat engine gave 65 bhp (48 kW) at 6,500 rpm using 10 :1 compression ratio.
It was too much for the stretched old 1948[3] Model 7 497 cc-based design, with main bearing failures and broken pistons being reported in the press, along with quality control issues.
The government offered a financial rescue package contingent on a merger of the two groups and Norton-Villiers-Triumph was born.