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Cult bike Munch Mammut
Magnificent primeval cattle
The master recently passed away, but his ingenious work is immortal – Friedel Munch and his wonderful primeval cattle, as it is called by the many fans and few owners, but which was never officially called that.
Genius and madness are often close together. Also and especially with motorcycle constructions that deviate from the monotony of mass production. One such construction is the M.and mammoth. Her father is the Hessian master mechanic Friedel Munch, born in 1927. The son of a workshop owner was already driving motorcycle races in the late 1940s. With pre-war designs, however, there was no flower pot to be won, and so the gifted screwdriver and technician constructed almost everything himself, from the engine to the chassis to the brakes. “Munch-Spezial” was the name of his first work, with which he became a tuning specialist and Horex expert advanced. At times he even worked in the testing and racing department of the Bad Homburg manufacturer and, after production was discontinued, took over many production facilities and the entire Imperator spare parts inventory.
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Cult bike Munch Mammut
Magnificent primeval cattle
Only 478 real Munch machines
Friedel Munch was a brilliant technician, but his commercial skills were rather mediocre. The collaboration with his first partner, the US publisher Floyd Clymer, worked quite well, but when he sold his shares to a US playboy and professional son shortly before his death in 1970, that was the beginning of the end.
After two years, the windy partner went into hiding and only left debts – Munch went bankrupt for the first time. But Friedel Munch kept going and from 1973 built the TTS-E, the world’s first series motorcycle with an injection system and 100 hp. But the air for exclusive big bikes was getting thinner, because the Japanese manufacturers had meanwhile caught up strongly – the sales figures of the handcrafted and always very expensive motorcycle (over 20,000 marks) were no longer correct. The partnership with a German packaging manufacturer ended in bankruptcy after two years.
Munch also lost all of his private fortune. From 1974 he was only an employee of the Frankfurt cheese wholesaler Heinz W. Henke, who had bought the naming rights and production facilities. The businessman Henke and the technician Munch fell out, and from 1976 onwards both went their own ways, without success. Until 1980, Henke still sold more poorly than fairly under the Munch brand name. Friedel Munch looked after his old customers, converted seven machines to turbo engines and built a few sinfully expensive individual pieces with the Horex 1400 TI and the Titan 1800 and 2000 models. As a real Munch, only 478 machines were built, 130 of them TTS-E. Around 250 specimens have survived worldwide. Even after suffering a stroke in 1991, Friedel Munch remained closely associated with the conspiratorial mammoth driver community; but on April 27, 2014, at the age of 87, he had to say goodbye to this world. His mammoths gallop on, however.
Jahn
Friedel Munch (1927–2014), ingenious designer who lived 150 percent of the motorcycle theme.
Data
(Munch-4 1200 TTS) air-cooled four-cylinder four-stroke in-line engine, 1177 cm³, 65 kW (88 PS) at 6500 / min, 111 Nm at 4800 / min, four-speed transmission, double loop frame made of steel tubes, weight with a full tank of 255 kg, front tires 3.25 H 19, rear 4.00 H 18, tank capacity 18–34 liters, top speed approx. 200 km / h.
literature
“The legend of Friedel Munch and his motorcycles” by Winni Scheibe, 176 pages, 49 euros plus 6 euros shipping,
only through the author, email: winni-scheibe@t-online.de, Internet: www.winni-scheibe.com
Specialists
DBH-Motorradtechnik, Tel. 0 41 31/85 07 47, www.dbh-motorradtechnik.de, Mike Kron, Tel. 0 62 94/5 81, www.the-classic-bike-mike.de. A permanent exhibition in Munich with 26 unique pieces from the years 1967 to 1999 can be seen in the Technik Museum Speyer. In the 2010 feature film “Mammuth”, a Munch plays the leading role alongside Gerard Depardieu. As a DVD for less than 10 euros z. B. via www.amazon.de
Market situation
Only 478 copies were (officially) built, not 300 have survived. And almost all of them should be firmly in the hands of collectors. If it is then sold, nothing will happen below 60,000 euros for decent originals. And what’s even worse: The public hardly ever gets to know about it – there is no Munch section on mobile.de for good reason…
Club / IG / Internet
Munch-4 Club e. V., Albert Stehle, Tel. 0 23 05/8 58 94, E-Mail: acbc61@web.de
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