The motor is new. The favoured drive for these lathe was a "Mardrive" unit, derived from an industrial sewing machine motor with a built-in clutch that could be foot operated. Normally there would be a multi step countershaft in the drive train. Drive to the headstock pulley could be either from below or out the back. Even on the plain bearing headstock that I have, it is said to be good for 10,000 rpm. I'll be happy with 3,000. I wanted to keep the lathe compact and semi-portable so I have used a 2 pole motor with direct drive on a 1:1 pulley. With the VFD this gives me around 200-3,000 rpm which should be fine for model engineering (rather than watch making).
Cheers,
Rod