From our Archive
This month
An early apperance
- 1930
Percy ‘Tim’ Hunt, a noted extrovert and one of the quartet of stars who made up the Norton works racing team that was to be so dominant in the early 1930s, poses on his new Arthur Carroll-designed ohc racer in the paddock at the 1930 TT races. The polished petrol and oil tanks really make the ‘cammy’ racer stand out – a rare departure from the traditional silver-and-black tank finish. Hunt’s tie, daring for the era, stands out too.
Despite the Arthur Carroll/Joe Craig designed/developed machines making their TT debut, replacing the Walter Moore penned models used with varying success for the past three seasons, the 1930 races were a disappointment. Best of the Senior Nortons was Jimmy Simpson, who finished third behind the all-conquering four-valve Rudges of Wal Handley and Graham Walker, though at least Simpson’s model kept going – Hunt, in a result typical of the season Norton was enduring, didn’t make it that far. However, as the year progressed it was proved the new Norton was at least reliable and from there, under the brilliant guidance of Joe Craig, the all-conquering racers of the next few seasons emerged.
Percy Hunt was one of the emerging stars of the racing world in 1930. Born in 1907, he won the 1927 Senior Amateur TT at his first attempt, on a Model 18 Norton bought for him by his father James, which the Hunts collected on new year’s day 1927. The new 18 replaced an earlier version, bought by James Hunt (the owner of a string, rope and driving belt factory) for his son as a reward for passing his school exams. On the Norton, Tim – he was given the moniker ‘Tim’ after Tiger Tim, a then-popular comic – visited the Isle of Man in 1925 and decided he wanted a go. He approached his father who told him to wait a year and that he’d buy him a machine and they'd do it properly.
Mr Hunt senior was good to his promise and so Tim pitched up for the 1927 Amateur TT with his Model 18 – and promptly won! Dad was so impressed he bought Tim one of the new CS1s for the 1928 TT and although Tim crashed out, he then used the same Norton to win a silver medal in the Scottish Six Days Trial, before again pressing the hard-working and versatile model into service for the 1928 Senior Amateur TT (in those days, if a rider was a true amateur, a TT entry didn’t prohibit an appearance in the September races). He repeated his success of 1927 and what’s more, his fastest lap (71.05mph) bettered the TT lap record! To underline his stellar talent he would have won the Junior too, had his unfashionable and unfancied Levis not blown up when he was in a clear lead.
For 1929, the flamboyant Hunt was recruited to the works team, alongside Stanley Woods and Jimmys Guthrie and Simpson. The Moore CS1 was not getting any quicker (in fact, with the internal strife between Moore, Craig et al in the Norton camp, it seemed to be, if anything, getting slower...) but Hunt made fourth at the TT and became European champion, winning the one-off championship race, that year held on a circuit near Barcelona, Spain.
By 1930, Moore had departed for NSU (Norton Spares Used...), leaving Craig and youngster Arthur Carroll, who had joined Norton after serving his engineering apprenticeship, in James ‘Pa’ Norton’s time (Norton died 1925), as the two responsible for the racing programme. They thoroughly revamped Moore’s design – radically altering the camshaft and magneto drive layout – and though success wasn’t immediate, it was imminent. During the 1930 season the Rudge team was dominant – but come 1931, it was a different story entirely.
The 1931 Norton line up was back to the 1929 squad (Jimmy Guthrie had a one year sojourn with AJS in 1930) and was all conquering. On the continent they were imperious with Hunt (by dint of his French GP win) European champion, while Woods won the Ulster GP and then Tim did what no-one had done before – he scored a Junior/Senior TT double. Woods was to do the same the next season (and indeed the year after) but Hunt would always be the first. Soon after Woods’ double double Hunt’s career was over – an awful collision at the European (Swedish) GP of 1933, when he was unsighted and hit a slow moving local rider who was fiddling with his carburettor, left the Swede dead and Hunt with a badly broken thigh. Three months in Malmo hospital followed, then years of complications – despite being included in the Norton team for 1934, he never raced again and indeed it was 1938 before he could get about, albeit with one leg two and a half inches shorter than the other. Tim Hunt died aged 76 in 1984.
• Much more in this month's issue of The Classic MotorCycle magazine >>
