Heer One For Prosper

[Ulsterman]

in rummaging through rabbit-eaten photo albums last night I came across this and thought I'd post it for PK, because he's fond of "fast classics". The picture is much sharper than here-the tabs say "60" and the skull on the front plate is quite sharp. The cuff title I think says "4". I reckon it's @ 1934.

Slainte-

Edited April 2, 2008 by Ulsterman

[VonBierStein]

Nice photo...a little normalcy in a mad world. Wonder if the two are brothers and one is home on leave and visiting family. Thanks for posting

[Guest Rick Research]

Standarte 60 was in Insterburg.

[VonBierStein]

You da man Rick

[PKeating]

Go raibh maith agat! I only just saw this. What a wonderful photo. That is a DKW KM200, made from 1934 to 1936, so 1934 seems logical. The IC prefix places them somewhere in Ostpreu?en. IC was also used in the Memelland after the takeover. The deathshead looks like a second type, which appeared in 1934 and 1935. Standarte Nr 60 was based in Insterberg, which is in what was East Prussia. So there we are! There's a guy here in Paris with one of these in LW livery. Das Kleine Wunder! They're actually really sweet little bikes...for two-strokes.

Fast Classics, eh? We had a lot of fun doing that magazine. We were always getting the safety nazi contingent and their friends in motorcycle groups like the BMF busting our balls over some of the articles and photographs. Christ, but we pissed so many people off. I remember the screams of fury - so to speak - from wannabe Rockers when I coined the term "chromosexual" in an article about Tritons. I'd forgotten about it until a fellow in the States posted it on a biker website the other day: http://www.britbike.com/ubb/noncgi/ultimat...8/t/000723.html And then there was the lawsuit threat from a German European Commissioner after I illustrated a front-of-book newspiece about him with a picture of G?ring. Oh man! Mind you, we made a lot of people laugh too.

PK

[Ulsterman]

I thought you'd appreciate it. It was a great magazine and apparently rather sought after these days on eBay. I ran into a copy @ 22 years ago in a barber shop in the middle of nowhere, USA and was hooked. I suspect it lost its "edge" after you left though.

[PKeating]

Hmmm. Let's just say that they toned it down after the Art Director and I left. It lasted for a few more issues, written by guys who were more into modern stuff and couldn't understand that there might have been more to motorbikes than crotch rockets and pulling wheelies. Hey, I'm not knocking them. They did their best. Whatever floats your boat and all that. But we had a ball for four issues. It's funny to see copies changing hands for more than the price of a round. I have quite a few examples of issues 2 to 4 but Issue #1 is scarce. There was another mag around the same time: Road Rocket. Now, RR is very rare. It was put out by EMAP whose executives freaked out over the first two issues. It was seriously off the wall. It was pulled after the second issue and EMAP pulped as many copies as they could. I suppose that FC and RR were really more into the lifestyle aspect and, in that sense, broke a mould. The opposition tried to emulate them but failed. They tried to get me to work for them but a short stint on Motor Cycle News as an editor went nowhere.

Ah...memories...

PK

[PKeating]

Coming back - almost - to German or Germanic motorcycles, here's the Neval roadtest from Issue #1. The opening spread showed the outfit in a garbage dump in the south of France, with my mate and I in matching tangerine racing leathers on our backs in the trash. Had the Ivans and their importers had any money in those days, they'd have sued us. I think that's what they said on the phone at any rate. I suppose I ought to scan some of this stuff and stick it up on the web somewhere.

neval test/fast classics/copyright ? prosper keating 1994/pix by mike carr/?

The old harpie hovered with the asparagus. She?d stopped applying it to me but she was still dangerous?I could tell. Although the local lingo for the usual mitigating circumstances escaped me for the moment, I?d managed to convey that I wasn?t actually a German, despite the provocative lines of the Neval combo, half-obscured by the remains of the fruit?n?veg stall.

Neval. Hardly a name to conjure with, is it? At least Cossack implied strength, savagery, the wilds of Old Mother Russia, and all that sort of thing. Neeval or Neville? Who knows? Who cares? Quite why they changed the name to something more redolent of a Third World gut condition beats me, but there you are.

Ural, one of the previous model names, has a certain industrial charm but Urinal was predictable. Dnepr is better. The name of a river somewhere in the Russian hinterland. Dnepr almost makes up for Neval. The Neval MT10 Dnepr is generally referred to by those in the know as the ?military model?. Of course, Eastern Bloc motorcycles either look military or as if there should be a large key protruding from the rider?s back. Remember when every third backstreet in bedsit land had its very own Cossack outfit, providing a feline maternity ward amongst the fifth-hand Crestas and second-hand prophylactics? Or when every third-rate war film had its own anal-retentive Aryan mannequin stacking any number of Cossacks decked out to look like pukka Wehrmacht BMW outfits?

Well, in spite of the fall-off in demand for atrocious war films and all-purpose bedsit bikes, the Ivans still make, and export, the old warhorses. A brand-new BMW-based boxer twin attached to a licence-built Steib military sidecar sounds like a lot of bike for the money at ?2.5k all-in.Neval UK occasionally offer the option of reconditioned BMW R80 lumps instead of the Russian original for another two grand but then, that rather defeats the object.

Nothing like confidence in what you?re selling. There again, selling Nevals has to be something of an uphill task. The hippie?s project bike has always suffered from something of an image problem unless, that is, you?re into MAG membership on L-plates or dodgy white label cassettes of German marching medleys. Or both. Neval UK, a few miles north of the Humber Estuary, expressed an initial reluctance to part with a test bike. Seems they?ve had problems with pressmen crashing Neval after Neval and then writing unkind things or not writing anything at all. Perhaps they should get a larger advertising budget sorted out - that always sways a few previously objective opinions. There again, it may be that those who wrote nothing at all did so because they couldn?t, because they?re dead?

To say that the test bike handled badly on collection would be phrasing it extremely generously. The 50 mph ride from Humberside to London was due in part to the speed governors in the flat-slide carbs but going any faster would have resulted in a spot of toilet trading with Old Nick. As any Old Git will tell you - if you stand still long enough - an outfit should be set up with ?toe-in? and ?lean-out?. This means that the sidecar wheel must angle slightly inwards towards a notional line through the wheels of the motorcycle to counteract the drag effect of the effective deadweight of the sidecar. The motorcycle and the sidecar should also lean away slightly from each other through a vertical plane to counter the effects of loading and so on. The test outfit employed substantial ?toe-out? and ?lean-in? sending my ringpiece into spasm several times during that long, long journey.

Another aspect of sidecar-ing is the need to motor the cycle around the sidecar through lefthanders. Ergo: with UK-spec outfits, the throttle should be held wide open all the way through lefthanders. This requires manliness. Cowardice often leads to a shotgun marriage with, if you?re lucky, the opposite verge or, if not, an oncoming lorry. This is all fine and dandy if the grunt?s on tap; it wasn?t and lefthanders, especially uphill variations with psychotic crosswinds and lavatory brush salespersons on tailgate duty, provoked a terror unfelt since my days at the mercy of a schoolful of paedophilic monks. A clutchless gearshift device inspired by Triumph?s Slickshift of the late 1950s only added to the general sense of misery. Oh?and it was raining as well.

Overtaking a swaying Teutonic Road Train with Freddie Kruger inches behind you in his White Minivan in a rising lefthander that tightens, with the steel hawsers of the cutprice Armco getting closer as the power dies away, promotes sweaty crevices. Braking?s not an option because of the mutinous chassis and a front end as soft as a lager lout?s dick. Cossacks weren?t this bad. There again, Cossacks tended not to go anywhere and were therefore inherently safe. Back in ###### City, it took a day of spannering to sort out most of the problems?as far as they could be sorted out. Other revelations included the twin-leading shoe front brake set up for one-shoe contact (an economy measure perhaps?); tappet clearances more suited to a WW1 rotary aero engine, and a Lucas Rita lookalike electronic ignition system whose rotor clouted one of the coils as it revolved.

The front forks were biased to the left but we figured it didn?t matter so much because the outfit behaved like a tranquilised elephant anyway. The knobbly tyres and the reverse gear, found only on MT10 military models, proved useful as the outfit spent a fair amount of time on grass verges and in hedgerows, except when motorways were used as there was then ample width to remain more or less on the tarmac.

Admittedly reluctant to surrender any of the mph I?d fought so hard to wring from the mass of chernobylium alloy and pig-iron pinking away under the tank, I?d hammered the Neval through the sort of threadbare French villages where you get chased uphill by three-legged dogs, only to have this fruit?n?veg stall leap out in front of me. Of course, going for a gap between the houses barely wide enough for three combine harvesters and using the brakes was reckless. Would les flics wear the Regina v Spike Milligan defence? Perhaps not. Best to offer the old gallows bird some folding stuff and clear out sharpish before the knackers materialised. She filleted my wallet with the skill of a Cairo whore, leaving me insufficient even to buy a box of matches to torch the outfit. Just as well, of course, as it wasn?t mine - one of its few saving graces. Virtually undriveable before, the Neval was now simply undriveable.

The forks were as bent as the old bitch?s bananas?except the bananas were more sort of flattish than bent and belonged to me now. I was alone. Alone and destitute in a part of rural France yet to be emasculated by Peter Mayle. I wasn?t alone in the truest sense; it?s just that, with the best will in the world, my fellow hacks? test bikes weren?t geared low enough to stay with me on the move. Not even the Harley. I saw them only at sunrise; for the last ten minutes of their three-hour lunch stops; and whenever I happened to crash, in which case my non-appearance would have a searchparty retracing the route scanning ditches and so on.

Not that I crashed on purpose, out of a sense of isolation, you understand. The Neval managed that all by itself. My colleagues must have done the distance to the South of France twice over; forty clicks forwards?twenty back to extract me from the wreckage?thirty forwards. Half-an-hour wait?n?debate. Back again?only to swerve off the road themselves as the Neval zig-zagged into view, hurtling along with Quasimodo ringing the bells in each pot as a combination of French gasoline and capricious ignition timing spark-eroded the piston crowns.

The danger had passed for the time being and a strange stillness settled over the little French village, disturbed only by the gentle breeze stirring last year?s Front National posters. I manhandled the warped outfit onto some wasteground and waited. A three-legged dog hobbled by, eyeballed me, and limped on with a disdainful bronchial grunt. A cacophony of mechanical mayhem punctuated by the odd successful combustion announced the return of the Harley and the BSA caff racer.

Out came toolrolls and apart came the Neval?s forks. A clean task as neither leg contained much in the way of oil. Both stanchions were dog-legged?a hydraulic press job. As I indulged in a spot of Maroccan yoga, the boys inserted a stanchion between the bars across a nearby window and heaved?to show willing perhaps. A sign above the window swam into focus through the clouds of herbal remedy: Pharmacie.

Funny thing about rozzers the world over: never there when they?re needed but always there when they?re not. It took several tubs of snake oil, some favourable references to Monsieur Le Pen, and a few tokes on the cheroot to persuade the chap that we weren?t a bunch of drug-crazed bikers in search of an angry fix. Nice enough cove in his own way. Much nicer than the motorcycle cops in another ghost village who nicked me for speeding; they refused to accept the Neval in lieu of the spot fine.

Speeding, I hear you ask? After removing the speed governors from the carbs, the Neval was good for about seventy mph on the level and rather more down steep hills into villages with 30 kph limits.

The stanchion was still bent. I threw it away in disgust but it came right back. A trip to the local bar induced lateral thought. Replace both stanchions in the yokes with the bent sections turned inwards towards one another. Replace the carjack holding the whole shebang up with two substantial concrete blocks and use it to jack the stanchions outwards an equal amount. It worked a treat. Good thing the stanchions were so pliable, eh? The tool kit doesn?t include a carjack nor concrete blocks but they?re a worthwhile addition and the blocks assist in holding the sidecar down if you can?t find anyone stupid enough to travel in the chair.

The handling improved a bit after that particular crash but the grabby front stopper and the Teflon Skidmaster tyres called for several replays of the drill. We got quite good at it. Lefthanders still brought on a spasm or two of involuntary buttock-clenching, due partly to the reverse camber effect of driving a UK-spec outfit on Napoleon?s Left, but not quite the abject terror of before.

Once down in the South, I leased a lunatic from the Montpellier Ayslum and trained him, with the aid of a cattle prod, to emulate Helmut Lunemann?s passenger. Looked quite normal in his orange Aviakit one-piece and state-of-the-art lid. Not having to dismount to push the outfit through iffy-looking bends cut journey times dramatically.

The riding position dictated by the fixed rubber saddle, the overly swept-back ?bars, and the ?adjustable? footrests couldn?t be more tortuous had it been devised by Torquemada?s technicians. The pillion seat is worth trying just so you can boast about it should you ever find yourself in a face-off with a bunch of Uruguayan gauchos.

The indicators flash in time to the engine which guzzles gasoline at a monstrous rate. The reserve facility is good for a mile or so which is ideal for your average Kalmuk goatherd on the Steppes. Not. There again, the chair could carry at least fifty gallons of one-star. The rear differential seeps, depositing lube onto the hub and thence to the read tyre although this is, of course, academic.

The front brake is, in fact, the only really good fitting. Pointless. The forks are crap, the tyres don?t grip, and the sidecar needs a brake of its own as panic braking will end in a merger with all sorts of unyielding objects to the right. When one traffic light pulled a snidey on me with less than two hundred metres in hand, I had to hurl the plot down a convenient sidestreet. The passenger carried on, which was a bit unfortunate.

In happier times, when the factory was state-subsidised and could sell their machines to the West dirt-cheap in exchange for hard currency, the shortcomings weren?t quite so obvious. As price increases, so does awareness of flaws. The ?2.5k retail price has to be looked at in the context of, for instance, low mileage grey import crotch rockets from Japan.

Come to that, a running if smokey old 1960s BMW R60/2 with Earles forks and a genuine Steib sports chair can be had for less than the Neval. Sure?you?ll probably have to rebuild it but you?ll certainly have to rebuild the Neval - with new bearings and BMW parts - before the odometer jerks around to 5000 kilometers?unless you?re fortunate. You could take the plunge and pay ?4.5k for the R80-engined version and really develop a grudge.

The Owners Club - no, really, there are enough owners to form a club - appear to advocate absolutely everything made in Russia. Hmmmmm. The bottom end was knocking by the time I got halfway back up the Cherbourg Peninsula on the home run. At the port, I saw an identical model on a transporter carrying smashed-up holiday-makers? cars back to Blighty. A conrod had apparently made a break for freedom somewhere near Lorient. The clock showed less than 4000 km.

I limped back up the A3 to The Smoke and called Neval UK. I was impressed by their cool detachment when I described some of their test outfit?s shortcomings. Seems Nevals undergo some kind of transformation between Russian production line and UK end user. Neval blamed Motor Cycle News. Cutting short the imminent monologue about the evils of The Press, I informed than that I would have the outfit delivered to their southern agent.

How nice to find such traditional dealers. The Neval could be a decent bike for the money if someone gave a damn. It has a certain inverted style. The expressions of diners in one Proven?al town square as we drove backwards, three-up, around their tables made the ordeal almost worthwhile. The fear on the faces of oncoming drivers was fun as well, as long as I could co-ordinate my zig with their zag.

These plus points might justify buying an old smoker for a few hundred notes but four-figure sums are simply out of the question unless the manufacturers get a grip on quality and preparation control. Should you buy one, wrap up warmly against Death?s chill breath: he?ll be perched on that pillion most of the time?and he won?t half be feeling mean after a few miles.

SIDEBAR

Popular lore suggests an image of the Ivans, flushed with victory over the Nazis in 1945, hot-footing it back to the Motherland with some BMW/Steib blueprints for a spot of plagiaristic R&D. This is about as accurate as the wellworn notion that German women ######ed Russian soldiers to feed their kids and enjoyed it.

The truth is rather less palatable. The Ribbentrop-Molotov Non-Aggression Pact, signed between the Nazis and the Soviets in 1940, entitled Boris to manufacture some of Herman?s goodies under licence. The Neval actually owes more to the pre-war Zundapp outfit used by the Wehrmacht but nowhere near as good as the BMW machine. The Russians tend to be coy about this in the same way that Volkswagen are coy about the early history of the Beetle, largely styled by Adolf himself.

The manufacturers have gone to considerable trouble to shake off this unfortunate image. The sidecar grabrail no longer has locating serrations for the machinegun mount and the entrenching tool bracketry has also been omitted. Futile. One gaggle of pensionable inebriates propping up the Maire in a French town along the route lurched as one to their feet as the Neval droned into view and raised their hands to the sky in a gesture familiar to three generations of German soldiers.

Copyright ? Prosper Keating 1993

Edited May 27, 2008 by PKeating

[Naxos]

This is my Dad (ex Fallschirmj?ger now one of the Wild Ones) on a pre-war DKW in 1949

Hardy

Edited May 28, 2008 by Naxos

[Ulsterman]

PK:

That deserves to be on the web...."the skill of a Cairo whore" is a phrase that sticks with one.

Good stuff!

[Danny70]

... I suppose I ought to scan some of this stuff and stick it up on the web somewhere.

PK -

Brilliant!!

If you ever do get around to putting these on the web, please post a link for us.

Ulsterman -

Thanks for posting that great photograph.

Regards - Danny

[PKeating]

Thanks for the comments, gents. I've ordered a 'serious' scanner that can handle A4-plus page sizes as most of the mags for which I have written are large format. So there'll be less excuse to put off following the trend and sticking a website up there. A large part of a writer's life, you see, is spent finding pretexts to avoid getting on with the job. These forums are brilliant in that respect. I was thinking of a whole Fast Classics section with the best bits of the first four issues because there were so many wonderful examples of writing and photography in them, even from contributors who usually turned out 'filler' for the established motorcycle magazines.

Inasmuch as the iconic Mark Williams' Performance Bike broke new ground in 1971, giving greaser-era bikers an alternative to The Green 'Un and The Blue 'Un, FC gave guys who were into riding older machinery for various reasons an alternative to EMAP's Classic Bike, which was aimed more at the kind of people in leisurewear and Cornish Pasty shoes who transport their old bikes about on trailers. Mind you, I always enjoyed The Classic Motorcycle when dear old Bob Currie was at the helm. Sure, it was for coffin-dodgers but the kind of coffin-dodgers who could tell us a thing or two over a few beers before climbing into their rubber coats and blatting off home in a cloud of Castrol R to feed the cat. Then Bob popped his clogs and the whiny-voiced cringeworthy executives at EMAP screwed the CMC up too.

I enjoy leafing through Classic Bike in WH Smiths here in Paris and looking at all the ads for copper bracelets, piles cushions and home equity loans. Mark Williams, who gave me my break and my grounding in publishing, always said their readership was dying. They've been a long time about it but the ads say it all. And the mag is now full of Jap Cr@p. Still, musn't grumble: EMAP went bust recently. Oh well, I'm off out to change the oil in the HRD and tighten up a few nuts and bolts. Natch...there's a good reason for not getting on with the articles I have to write.

In the meantime, coming back to the topic of German motorcycles, here's a rather nice photograph - a present from my friend Eric Queen - of a Luftwaffe officer cadet getting to know a slightly later, military version of the DKW KM 200. Note details like the bashplate, for off-roading. As I said, there's a fellow who rides one of these about, just like this one, in Paris. He doesn't dress the part, though. That might be taking it a bit far.

PK

[Note: this website isn't accepting a 53MB image and my remote host is down for maintenance so I'll have to put the image up later - PK]

Edited May 30, 2008 by PKeating

[PKeating]

Trying again.

No dice. It's telling me that 52MB is greater than the available space.

[PKeating]

There we go! Looking at it again, it's not the KM200 but actually the NZ500. As anyone who has ever ridden a two-stroke single of more than 250cc can confirm, the NZ500 was a fast machine, although the carb, apparently, had a governor fitted. This was simply a bolt screwed into the top, limiting the upward movement of the throttle slide. Enterprising soldiers removed it but it was a chargeable offence if caught.

PK

Edited May 30, 2008 by PKeating