Keeper of the Norton Faith
KEEPER OF THE NORTON FAITH
IGNITION
NEWS
One man's mad passion for riding his rarities
Steven L. Thompson
Asked how he came to own 100 classic motorcycles, 39-year-old Jamie Waters replied: “About 15 years ago, I was living in Manhattan, with some disposable income and no means of transportation whatsoever. I missed tinkering and decided I’d start looking for a classic British bike to get started, with no real designs on collecting. I didn’t want anything too peculiar or temperamental or so rare that it would be hard to keep on the road, so I came to a choice between parallel twins from Triumph, B5A, and Norton. I started looking around for bikes and called Randy Baxter of Baxter Cycle about an oil-in-frame BSA he had listed for sale. Instead of just selling me that bike, he asked questions about what I intended to do with it. Me: ‘I'd like to modify the bike to make it sportier and more usable.’ Randy: ‘Well, why don’t you just start with the sportiest, most usable of all British twins, the Norton Commando?”’ Waters took the advice and built a unique
collection, of which half are Nortons, and races as well as collects them. Why Nortons? “I buy what I like,” he said, and “I like Nortons so much that it became a bit of an exercise to find/own/preserve representative machines from the firm’s significant eras, beginning with their worlddominating overhead-cam singles, then the widely successful parallel twins (especially their iconic works machines and series Production Racers), and eventually to their amazing rotary-engine machines. And there are the sounds: from the uncorked rasp of a Manx, to the snorting crispness of a well-tuned Commando, to the unearthly shriek of a rotary at full song, Nortons rarely fail to deliverthe aural goods.”
I encountered Jamie by selling him one of the seven (out of only 119 factory-built) Commando Production Racers in his collection some years ago because of his interest in significant factory racers, mostly of the 19G0s and 70s. He’s got CR and XRTT Harleys, Yamaha TZs, BSA and Triumph Rob North-framed Triples, plus the occasional Vincent V-twin, Matchless G50, AJS 7R, Laverda SFC, MV Agusta, MZ, Moto Guzzi, Indian twinand four-cylinder models, and classic Flusqvarna dirt bikes.
"WELL, WHY DON’T YOU JUST START WITH THE SPORTIEST, MOST USABLE OF ALL BRITISH TWINS, THE NORTON COMMANDO?"
As a portfolio managerand financialinvestment analyst, Jamie of course recognizes the monetary value of his collection but says he created it “out of a love for the machines, forthe period they represent and competed in, and out of a desire to make sure they survive to be shared with others.” That’s the main reason I sold my Commando Production Racerto him. Besides, as he said, “If I collected purely to make money, I'd have cornered the market on green-frame Ducatis and not on Norton Production Racers!” E1MM
Jamie Waters BORN: 1975, Sylvania, Georgia EDUCATION: BA, Economics, Stanford University, 1997 PROFESSIONAL: Financial wizard-Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan in research, SAC, Guggenheim as Portfolio Manager OLDEST NORTON: 1931 500cc OHC single NEWEST NORTON: 1992 588cc rotary
