Disaster has struck ! Lost posts in the blog from Januari till now ! I can’t get them back neither as the host 🙁 Have no idea what happend, have to make a better backup plan to avoid something like this in the future ! I apologize !
Black and white photo from the Distinguised Gentlemans Ride 2022, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Finnish GP 1968
Agostini MV Agusta (No. 1) and Kiisa S-565 Vostok-4 (No. 11).
It was…. in 1968 when Vostoks were next seen at international races in Finland with a 500cc “S-565″, which in its design resembled a 350cc model, while it had a more sturdy chassis and 3 valves were put into each cylinder (2 intake, 1 exhaust). Kiisa was leading in the race for the whole lap when Giacomo Agostini took over and Kiisa came off track interrupted.
Eyewitness account: “I was at the Finnish GP in 1968, and saw and heard! the Vostok. It made tremendous noise and was fast. If it had been piloted by a top-notch rider, Ago would have been pressed hard”. – pkr2000dk
sources: USSR Sportsbikes, Ants Kikerpuu, bCozz archives
Vostok four-cylinder developed by the Soviet Union to take on MV Augusta. Test stands showed more horsepower.
See main article: Vostok – an Unsolved Crime
Ilya sends, just to make you happy and have a nice day.
The Holodomor (death by hunger, in Ukrainian) (Ukrainian: Голодомо́р, romanized: Holodomor, IPA: [ɦolodoˈmɔr];[2] derived from морити голодом, moryty holodom, ‘to kill by starvation’)
Awfull story from the past ! Caused when a dictator wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.
KMZ Roadracing sidecar “Strizh” made in limited small numbers. It looks fast and competitive.
Still missed but not forgotten.
In my own quest for more information on the DKW racers and their connection with the Soviets, I found a book in German “DER LETZTE KOMPRESSOR ZWEITAKTER MIT DKW-GENEN” (translates to “THE LAST KOMPRESSOR TWO-STROKE WITH DKW GENES” by Frieder Bach and Heiner Jakob.
Starting in 1945, August Prüßing developed a two-stroke opposed-piston engine with two cylinders and a Centrix compressor in Chemnitz on behalf of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD). The basic construction was designed for displacements of 250, 350 and 500 ccm. This engine was the last new construction of a turbocharged two-stroke engine and thus the end of a glorious era in which DKW had played a prominent role in international motorcycle racing since the 1920s and 1930s. The entire wealth of experience from almost two decades of DKW racing development found its expression in an extraordinary design that determined racing events in the USSR well into the 1950s. The design was briefly revived in a modified form in a self-made car by Brunswick privateer Kurt Kuhnke, only to lose its raison d’être with the FIM’s international ban on compressors in 1950. This documentary aims to keep alive the memory of a milestone in motorcycle racing about which little has been known so far.
There is much conjecture about what actually happened with pre-war DKW race department and later events in the Soviet Union. and since. This vacuum was quickly filled with myth, legends and lies.
What did they sound like? These machines were give the nickname “Der Trommelfellbohrer” – “The eardrum drill” as can be seen in footage of crowds running for their lives with their hands over their ears!