Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I watched “Smiley’s People,” a six-hour BBC mini-series set in the Cold War era of the 1960s, based on the novel by John LeCarre. It starred Alec Guinness as the implacable, imperturbable spymaster George Smiley, drawn out of retirement by the prospect of capturing his old Bolshie nemesis, Karla. It made me a little wistful for the simple days when it was us versus them, and it was easy to identify who “we” and “they” both were, since there was an Iron Curtain between us. Most of us even agreed on who the good and bad guys were.

I note that Murray’s Motorcycle Museum, on the Isle of Man, has put its collection up for sale. (Before I moved to the IoM, I had a beer with expatriate Brit motojournalist Mick Phillips, who told me, “You realize that when the TT’s not on, it’s the 1960s on the Isle of Man.” I told him that was why I had to go.) Maybe the sale of this quirky collection is evidence that time always catches up, even there. While officially reported TT attendance has not decreased, perhaps the crowds no longer make the long trip up to Bungalow corner (where the museum sits in a forlorn, windblown col.)

The list of machines for sale doesn’t seem to include the Honda six-cylinder Grand Prix racer that was presented to the museum by Soichiro Honda himself. After he retired, Mr. Honda made a sort of pilgrimage to the sites of his company’s greatest racing victories. He arrived with the six in tow (if memory serves, it was one of the over-bored 250s that the company raced as a 350) and left it there, where it was the star attraction of a collection as dusty and inscrutable as the museum’s curator/owner himself. I don’t know whether it’s been kept aside, or privately sold, returned to Honda, or what.

Of course Honda wasn’t the only company seeking legitimacy in Grand Prix racing. In fact, very soon after Honda’s first TT appearance, Suzuki showed up. In 1960, the firm entered Mitsuo Itoh on a 125cc Suzuki Colleeda. Itoh broke down at the Bungalow early in one practice session. Conspiracy theorists take note: the East German star Ernst Degner, riding an MZ, also broke down at the same place and time. I have always wondered whether it was there, high on the Mountain and far from any Stasi (the infamous DDR secret police) “minders”, that Degner first made contact with Suzuki.

It was the beginning of the “Japanese Invasion.” That language clearly evokes Pearl Harbor and WWII, which were still fresh memories. (The Manx newspapers called the first Honda and Suzuki TT teams “Japs.”) The Japanese Invasion may have been motorcycling’s hot war, but we had a cold war, too. The more-or-less official Communist team in Grand Prix racing was MZ, based in East Germany. And what a team they were in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Beginning in 1953, the MZ race shop was under the command of one of the true geniuses of our sport—Walter Kaaden.

After forced induction was banned, Kaaden developed MZ two-strokes that combined disc-valve induction with expansion-chamber exhausts. The exhausts, in particular, were essentially Kaaden’s invention. (There were some pre-Kaaden exhausts that took the general bulbous shape, but only he understood the principles of resonance, pressure waves, and all the stuff that made them work.) It is impossible to overstate the engineering impact of the expansion chamber. In 1954, MZ engines produced about 100bhp per 1000cc. By 1961, they produced 200bhp/1000cc.

The success of MZ in Grand Prix racing was an important element of East German propaganda. While the marque was justifiably proud that the very best riders of the day (Hailwood included) lined up to ride their 125 and 250cc racers, they also groomed a homegrown Communist star in the form of Ernst Degner.

Then, in 1961, with Degner poised on the brink of stardom, the East German defected while competing at the Swedish Grand Prix. Within hours he was on his way to Japan, where he signed to ride for Suzuki. At the time, there were rumors that he’d escaped with a complete set of drawings or even a disassembled motor in his luggage. That needn’t have been the case; Degner was not just a wrist, he was a trained engineer who had played an important development role at MZ. The contents of his helmet were damaging enough to the Communist cause.

Degner won the 1962 50cc championship on a Suzuki that bore a distinct resemblance to an MZ. The following year, Hugh Anderson won on a Suzuki 125, and another Japanese brand was away to the races.

“Degner Curve” at Suzuka is named after him. It was the spot at which he once crashed while leading an All-Japan Championship event. Degner’s post-racing career was sparsely documented, and he’s been dead over 20 years now, so his trail’s grown cold, but I have read that Degner returned to Germany (albeit West Germany), where he provided in-service technical training to Suzuki dealership staff. He did not live to see the fall of the Berlin Wall, which would have allowed him to return freely to his home in the former East Bloc. Kaaden, however, was a good Communist all his life, even after German reunification. He never forgave his star rider’s betrayal. He died in 1996.

While the MotoGP support classes remain two-stroke powered—at least for the moment—Kaaden’s record of two-stroke innovation is starting to read like ancient history. Still, the switch from 500cc ‘strokers to 990cc “diesels” in MotoGP was merely a reflection of the fact that all big road bikes use four-stroke power. (The last big two-stroke I can think of was, yes, a Suzuki—the excellent GT750.) I wonder if we abandoned the two-strokes just when technology like Orbital’s direct-injection system promised to make them viable again. The day may come when (with better mileage and less pollution thanks to direct injection) two-strokes make a return in road bikes. If it happens, they’ll almost certainly sport expansion chambers based on stolen Cold War secrets.

Mister, we could use a man like Walter Kaaden again. But wait, this epic column’s not finished yet.

After I slept on what you’ve just read, it occurred to me that my friend Michelle Duff, the first North American rider ever to win a Grand Prix (back in 1965, when Duff was a male), had raced against Degner. I wrote her asking whether she could provide any additional insight into Degner’s life and times.

Michelle’s reply evoked the halcyon days of the Continental Circus so clearly that rather than just cut and paste a few of her quotes into the column to make me look smart, I felt compelled to append her entire response, verbatim. Here it is:

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Hi Mark:

Yes, I knew Ernst Degner. I think I first met him in 1961 at the Swedish GP at Kristianstadt. I seem to remember that his wife was in Hungary and she was able to get out to the west from there. When he received word that she was safe, he was gone immediately following the races. The next year he rode a phenomenally fast 125 Suzuki twin that had a lot of MZ technology attached to it. He rode for Suzuki for a number of years, and I think it was in 1963 at the Japanese GP that he crashed and he was knocked unconscious.

His bike caught fire. All the marshals were standing back not wanting to go into the flames, but Hugh Anderson ran in and pulled Degner to safety. He was badly burned over much of his body including his face. After many skin grafts, he raced again.

He was always a very dedicated rider and a very private person. Perhaps his East German upbringing did not allow him to trust anyone. Not that he was a hermit or anything; he was friendly to me and we talked as one rider to another, but being on different teams we did not share secrets or emotions. When I stopped racing I lost touch with him and it was not until many years later that I heard he had committed suicide. I also heard that he tried many times after he stopped racing to improve the scarred look of his face, but with little success. I’m afraid I can offer little information about how he died, or what he did when his racing career was over.

I rode an MZ 125 once, at Sachsenring in the East German GP. Sachsenring was a road circuit like most European GPs. The section through the village of Hohenstein Ernsthal was all cobblestones and quite slippery in the wet. From the town, the road had been freshly paved and was a treat to ride. It paralleled the autobahn, which was temporarily closed for use as a parking lot. For about two miles there was nothing but bikes and cars parked along it. About 300,000 people used to attend the event. I remember in 1966, the organizers were worried on Saturday because attendance had been down to 225,000 spectators, but on Sunday they were happy when just over 300,000 people entered the racing complex.

The original Sachsenring course must have been 8 or 10 km around. The new Sachsenring, the course the MotoGP guys use today, uses the same uphill tight left switchback hairpin and start-finish area as the old one, but immediately past the start-finish line the new course turns sharply right and is all new. The stretch of road that we used to get from the start-finish area to the paddock (where we used to work on our bikes and camp) is now filled with modern car dealerships. The roads that made up the old circuit are all still there, but they’re hard to recognize amidst all the new construction.

I only went to the MZ factory once and do not really remember it. That was in 1966; I had fitted a homemade twin disk setup to my RD56 Yamaha twin (the one the factory lent me to ride privately for the season). I was using two Mini Cooper calipers sawed in half with a solid aluminum plate across the back to support the inside brake pads. Because of limited space between the forks for a twin caliper system, the triangulation of the spokes was very limited. At the centre hub, the two sides of the spokes were only two inches apart.

One of the MZ mechanics was looking at my setup and worried there would not be enough support for the wheel. He offered to rebuild my front wheel and give me another centimeter of spoke triangulation. So I took the wheel over to the MZ race shop and in about 30 minutes they rebuilt my front wheel with new spokes; sure enough I had a much stronger wheel with the additional triangulation.

Hope the above is of some help.

Cheers,
Michelle

P.S. Have a great 2006.

Make Haste Slowly is Michelle’s autobiographical account of her racing career as Mike Duff. It is one of the very best descriptions of life as a star of the famed “Continental Circus,” racing in the wheel-tracks of Hailwood and Agostini. To order a copy, visit www.michelleduff.ca.

For a great account of Degner’s defection, check out Dean Adams’ amazing story “Defection!” in the January/February 2004 issue of Road Racer X.