The National Museum of Transport, in St. Louis, Mo., has one of the motorcycles Steve McQueen used in "The Great Escape."
I've always loved the low-slung look of the Indian 841. In the civilian world it's simply the Indian Scout, the light bike they offered in addition the the Indian Chief. .
Chatting to a bloke that collected welbikes & also had a Cushman or two. 'Parascooters' in general. Absolutely eye-watering prices for intact-ish WW2 examples. There was a German one 'Triumph Roller fur ladungstruppen', but not sure it went beyond trials. Italian Volugrafo Aermoto was what he really wanted. Not common it seems... Exhaust ran through the frame, & twin tyres?! Nice article in W&T on them. Must reread now.
♫Get your bitty motor runnin'. Head out on the camel way. Lookin' for adventure And whatever comes our way Yeah SarMajor go make it happen Take the world in a combat embrace Fire all of your Stens at once And explode into Tunis.♫
WLA chopper is quite an interesting Google term. I'm not a fan of the WLA's aesthetics anyway, so am quite content to see them cut up. Not that I particularly like most choppers either. From: To: Etc. Some WW2 things surprise me with their modernity. The bikes (particularly the American ones) mostly remind me it was a long time ago. Fairly archaic.
I miss my '37 (not the one below, mine was blue). I re-did the leather myself. San Diego to Pusan and back is a great way to get saddlebags done.
Sounds like a long way on a hardtail. Mind you, a mile or two on a hardtail is a bleedin' long way. Mr Payne on 2T has a beautiful 1940 Norton 16H. Found in completely original condition, possibly where it was dumped by the BEF, bulletholes & all if memory serves. Then restored by someone I can only describe as the epitome of rivet-counting entirely understandable madness. BEF 1940 Vehicle markings. My favourite WW2 motorcycle nugget is the price of those big Zundapp & BMW 750 combinations (without armament or spares). 3185 RM each. 1600 RM would pay for a Kubelwagen... 30,000 a Bf109.
The flattie came to the US via Enterprise back in the '60s. The owner died before he could ride it in the US. Family were friends and they offered it to me when they moved to new, smaller, digs. Hard to keep a hog in an apartment. None of his kids wanted it.
One feature of some motorcycle/sidecar combinations, particularly German, was that the sidecar wheel was powered, connected by an axle to the rear wheel of the motorcycle, essentially what we today would call a three-wheel ATV.
That tripped a memory . There was a BMW with a sidecar with a drive shaft powering the sidecar wheel a in the basement of a small motorcycle shop that I worked at while in college. BMW R75. last produced in 1944. Wikipedia "Since the target of 20,200 BMW R75's was not reached, it remained in production until the Eisenach factory was so badly damaged by Allied bombing that production ceased in 1944. "