<\/p>\n
KUHN <\/span>| <\/span>1968-75 <\/span>| <\/span>UK <\/span>:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n Gus Kuhn was a South London dealership with a racing pedigree rather than a manufacturer in the ordinary sense, and the customised Nortons it became known for were the work of the business rather than of the man whose name it carried. The Kuhn motorcycles were produced from 1968 to 1972 by Gus Kuhn of Stockwell, London, the firm shifting its emphasis in 1968 to customised Norton models, using the Commando for production-machine events and a pair of Seeley singles for the open race classes, joined by the Gus Kuhn Norton café racer available to order in a variety of specifications, before the firm later moved away from Norton and used BMW flat twins. That is the entry you have, and it is accurate as far as the machines go, but it needs one important qualification about the people.<\/p>\n The Gus Kuhn who raced was not the man building these Nortons. The dealership dealt in Triumph, BSA and Norton, but its reputation for racing success came only later, and after Gus Kuhn’s death in 1966 the name lived on under his son-in-law Vincent Davey, with the team focusing on racing modifications to Nortons and, by 1969, having won the British 500cc Championship, the Castrol Championship, the Duckhams Trophy, the Grovewood Award and the Redex Trophy, supplying machines over the years to riders including Mick Andrew, Charlie Sanby and Dave Potter. So the founder, Gus Kuhn, was the former racer, a speedway and TT man who had also competed at Brooklands, but he had died two years before the 1968 turn to Nortons, and it was Davey who ran the operation.<\/p>\n The racing programme was built quickly and from named components. A visit to the Barcelona 24-hour race in 1968 prompted Davey to start a team, Mick Andrew made his debut by finishing second at Lydden on a newly introduced Norton Commando, and for 1969 Davey bought an AJS 7R 350 and a Matchless G50 500 from Colin Seeley and had a racing Commando engine built into a sourced Commando frame. Andrew came fourth in the 1969 Production TT and won the production race at the Hutchinson 100 at Brands Hatch on a Commando, the Seeley G50 ridden by Tom Dickie was third in the Senior TT, and by the end of 1969 the team was running four Commandos, a fifth Commando-engined Seeley and the two singles. This is the precise basis for your line about Commandos in production events and Seeley singles in the open classes, with the singles being specifically the Seeley-framed G50 and 7R.<\/p>\n The track results fed directly into the road machines. When Norton released the Commando in 1968 the Gus Kuhn Norton was born, leading to an extensive customising service in which the dealership would build a Commando, in 750 and later 850 form, to any buyer’s specification, so that each machine differed in details such as the fibreglass fairing, chromed oil tanks and battery covers, clip-ons, rearsets and varying power levels, and export business grew strongly in the 1970s, with many bikes sent across the Atlantic. The competition side reached a high point in 1971. Tuned in-house, the Kuhn Seeley-Commando in Charlie Sanby’s hands beat Peter Williams’ works Norton on several occasions in 1971, and in that year’s Production TT Sanby was leading the works Triumphs with ease on his Kuhn Commando before a broken battery terminal put him out.<\/p>\n By 1975 the team machines were BMW flat twins, with two BMW R90\/S 900s and, for endurance races, a 900 bored out by Dave Sleat to 1,000cc. The firm’s activity therefore continued past 1972, with the Norton-based Kuhn machines belonging to roughly 1968 to 1972 and the BMW endurance racers, including the Penthouse-sponsored bikes, following in the mid-1970s.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KUHN\u00a0 |\u00a0 1968-75\u00a0 |\u00a0 UK\u00a0 : Gus Kuhn was a South London dealership with a racing pedigree rather than a manufacturer in the ordinary sense, and the customised Nortons it became known for were the work of the business<\/p>\n