Friday, September 10, 2010

MILITARY BIKES

From our Canadian correspondent:

Hey Sean, I'm not really into motorcycles but have seen these retro military-style ones on my local streets in Liberty Village in Toronto. Visit the site and check out the black one and the sand-colored one I saw today . . . .




I inspected them up close . . . they look like the kind of thing an attaché would ride up in to hand a letter to Winston Churchill . . .





Yeah, like maybe if Winston was working for the other side . . . or maybe some deep cover Werhmacht mole from his extensive personal intelligence network . . .




Checking out those first two something struck me as odd about these bikes - I've seen a LOT of WWII-era Wehrmacht Beamers - over in Europe and in the military museums at Fort Bragg - and I used to own an R100CS so I know my dual-opposed air-cooled twins - there was something wrong and I don't just mean the US star on the side car of a military BMW then it struck me these are modern-day retros inspired by the WWII era military workhorses . . .




. . . then I did the man thing and actually read the fine print (see below) - S.L.



"Designed By BMW in 1938, the CJ 750 is a decommissioned vintage l966 Chinese Army motorcycle."


6 comments:

  1. I was gonna say Urals but they have a bit better QC on theirs than the Chicom versions of the Beemers used by the Nazis. When the Soviets took control of the german factories, they shipped the stuff to the Union and many times, the tech stagnated (I've got a medium format Kiev camera, they got some of the Leica stuff back in the 40s, but they also make copies of Hass and Pentax cameras...mine is the Pent copy). Urals are not all that updated from the 30's BMW they derived from. Urals do have a neat 2 wheel drive side hack rig. And they sell a new bike in olive drab, as opposed to decomed chinese milsurp.

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  2. This is the German bike that topped 'em all:

    http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/Motorcycle-Reviews/1942-Zundapp-KS750.aspx

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  3. Charles, You got that right. That was such a cool bike.

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