1. You are looking for a U.S. distributor of Nolan helmets.
2. You are looking for online dealers.

Nolan is an Italian helmet company, and finding the right information in English can be a challenge. I’m sure you have come across the site www.nolanhelmets.com, hoping to find information on the dealer nearest you, only to find out that the site is only an affiliate. It sucks that that site outranks the official site of Nolan, which is www.nolan.it.

Nolan is actually the Nolan Group. As we all know, Nolan is in itself a helmet brand—popularized of course by world champion Casey Stoner. Nolan is also essentially X-Lite—another helmet brand popularized by another (soon-to-be) world champion, Jorge Lorenzo of the Fiat Yamaha MotoGP team. Apart from Nolan and X-Lite, the Nolan group also owns Grex and N-Com (helmet communication devices).

If you are looking for online dealers, two of the biggest Nolan helmet dealers are Extreme Supply and Helmet City. There are a number of other online stores carrying Nolan dealers, just make a search and I’m sure you’ll know if they are trustworthy enough.

However, if on the contrary you arrived at this page wanting to be a Nolan dealer, or just want to contact the official U.S. distributor, then you’re in luck. Information for the official U.S. distributor below.

CIMA Internationa, Inc.
1585 Beverly Court, Unit 118
Aurora, IL 60502
866-2HELMET; 630-701-1601; Fax: 630-701-1606
www.nolan-usa.com

If you want to have a master list of online and offline Nolan dealers, then help me out here. I will compile and add to a list soon. Please hit the comments below for any information regarding dealers. Thank you.

The obvious answer would be, the absolute top of the line. But wait, did you know that Nolan and X-Lite are basically the same? They are made by the same company, Nolangroup, or Nolan of Italy. Which means, Casey Stoner and Jorge Lorenzo basically wear the same helmet every race. To date, Nolan’s top racing helmet is the X-802. You can see the X-802 from both Nolan’s official site and X-Lite’s official site, and they both offer Stoner replica models.

Below are photos of Casey’s standard race helmet

Photos of Casey Stoner’s (sick) Phillip Island helmet

So, where can I get me one of these?

I will update this post once I see an online retailer carrying the X-802 replicas, but for now, maybe you can make do with the older X-602 Casey Stoner selling for $460.83, or the N64, if you can find one.

N100s come with scratch resistant visors, again made out of General Electric’s wonder material—Lexan. The opening of the chin guard on an N100 is made easy by Nolan’s Smart Lift system, where one needs to press a single lever on the left side. The pads are washable and removable, made of sanitized hypoallergenic material. It is also standard with Nolan’s anti-fog technology.

A closer look

The N100 is avaible on a wide variety of sizes ranging from XS up to XXXL. The catch mechanism is two sided, but closes and releases very easily. The chin vents can easily be operated with gloves on; it has this sort of scoop system with very big internal vents. Ventilation was, dare I say it, a breeze.

The face shield is removable without any tools; it has very good visibility and clearness. The chin bar pivots are neatly done and tucked, and moved around a sort of elliptical pivot which automatically closes the shield when the opened.

Inside, only the cheek pads are removable for cleaning. It does not leak in mild to heavy rain but the liners can still get dingy after a while.

The only problem with Lexan-based shields is if you’re wearing sunglasses underneath, you get a sort of rainbow effect on the colors of your natural view. Other than that, at around $120-$180 nowadays, the N100 is still of excellent value.

The Vision Protection System has a small tinted shell on top of the main visor, which you can retract depending on your shade preference. Interior pads are fully removable and washable (shall we expect anything less?), and comes with an extra neck roll for noise reduction.

So, how’s it?

The N42 has one vent on top—not that ventilation is as important on a 3/4, but we found the vent easily accessible (open/close) even with gloves. One more thing you’d notice different from a full-face is how much wider your peripheral vision becomes—quite important for longer trips and/or older riders.

At speed, the N42 seems very stable even if plenty of air came under the face shield. The visor is really clear, and can open up to full, just make sure you have some form of eye protection like sunglasses when you do this. The smaller sunshield can only be lowered if the main visor is closed all the way.

The clasp is not the standard latch we see on helmets, it is this sort of grooved tongue that slides and clicks as you tighten it—quite innovative and easy to use we should add.

We recommend you use this helmet only if the weather is too hot for a full-face to bear, other than that a full-face should be the only way to go. By the way, we haven’t tested the communication system on it, we know, bummer, but we haven’t gotten our hands on the additional N-Com system.