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• Inventor Norman Hossack What is his life really like??
• The Hossack fork

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Report The life of Norman Hossack

Inventor Norman Hossack
What is his life really like??

Norman Hossack amazed the professional world with engines and chassis. He created the Hossack fork in the early 1980s. It was installed in racing motorcycles and was the basis for the BMW Duolever. What is his life really like??

Markus Biebricher

01/30/2014

The man is an all-rounder. At the age of twelve he built a 125cc BSA bantam from scrap parts. In what is now Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia, the gifted mechanic spent his school days and discovered the motorcycling scene, which was lively even there. A 250cc Ducati Mach 1 became his first love. It finally infected him with racing fever. At the age of 23, Norman moved to England and together with Gordon Keith mixed up the European racing circuit for a number of seasons.

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Then his ingenuity became overwhelming. Norman thought many established motorcycle components were too complicated and heavy. He constructed a two-stroke engine with a square piston, in which the piston crown and connecting rod were one unit. The piston tilted back and forth in the cylinder in a defined manner and, due to its special shape, always had two sides in contact with the cylinder wall. Hossack successfully drove mopeds and go-karts with the prototypes, but no investor was found who would have supported further development or series production. Its inventor became known as “the guy who built a square piston engine”. In 1972, Norman hired McLaren Racing. Took care of engines, chassis, bodywork and was successful with the company in various racing series under the nickname “Stormin Norman”, including the Formula 1 World Championship with Emerson Fittipaldi, Indianapolis 500, Can Am and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The Hossack fork

Hossack

Ultimately, Norman is happy that his fork finally made it into mass production thanks to BMW.

After parting ways with McLaren, Norman invented the Hossack fork in 1976. This principle also arose from the desire to make the front wheel guidance lighter and less complicated while improving its function. Until 1983, Norman used the fork in numerous races in a 250cc Rotax VG and later won the British single-cylinder championship twice. In 1989 he built a Yamaha RD 350, which drove successfully in various racing series under the well-known racing drivers Ray Knight, Mat Oxley and Alan Cathcart. The French designer Claude Fior adopted the design principle for a racing machine in 1988, as did the New Zealander John Britten, who equipped his highly acclaimed V 1000 with it.

In the eighties, Norman began to try out his patent on BMW street motorcycles. He also designed a military motorcycle under the MOD label, on which the wheels could be swapped from the front to the rear using a quick-release fastener. Another feature was an air reservoir for filling the tires.

Hossack

Front suspension for air-cooled Ducatis, sprung (left), sprung (right): thanks to the tubular construction, even lower unsprung masses, extreme stability and high braking compensation. Norman’s dream: Audi as the new owner of Ducati, familiar with multi-handlebar solutions, is adopting the system in the motorcycles from Bologna.

At the beginning of the nineties, the German BMW dealer WuDO bought a series of Hossack fork kits and offered them as a conversion for the K 100. Other manufacturers modified Norman’s ideas and brought their own solutions onto the market. BMW itself developed the Duolever for the K 1200 S, which is essentially based on Hossack’s ideas. Usually a patent in England is protected for 20 years, but the inventor has to pay high fees for it. Norman had to give up at some point, the patent was free, and in 2004 BMW launched its Duolever unchallenged. Norman responded by publicly pointing out the similarity to its construction. Modest as he was, he spoke of a “renaming” and “takeover” of its construction. BMW now recognizes the Hossack fork as the forerunner of the Duolever, and Britten later named Norman as the father of the V 1000 front wheel suspension.

Norman put his ingenuity into the service of medical technology, relocated to California and constructed cardiac catheters. Now, at the age of 68, he is again focusing more on motorcycle topics and offers a modified front wheel guide for air-cooled Ducatis. Objectively and calmly, he explains the advantages of his design: less weight, simpler structure, greater rigidity. Did he get rich with his sometimes ingenious ideas? Not a bit, because his self-marketing was always too quiet. Is he thinking of quitting? Never! He has ideas for another 20 years in the quiver and is looking forward to trips with his Ducati. Soon he will take on the Panigale. Believes that it is structurally particularly well suited for refinement with Hossack solutions. He is currently working on a special quad chassis and a “swivel chassis”. Is he mad at BMW? No, because the Germans would have treated him most kindly. Anger slows down his ingenuity. And it should continue to storm as long as possible.

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