Dreaming away with old paper – column

Auto Motor Klassiek » Column » Dreaming away with old paper – column
Purchasing classics there

Just from man to man: I have 67 years of experience. How many years of experience do you have?

What we have already experienced! Despite this, I got a pile of what was then the only motorcycle magazine in the Netherlands: 'Weekblad Motor'. I got the 58 . hereth volume no. 31, July 30, 1971 in front of me. Someone once tapped 65 cents for that.

The magazine is numbered from page 1083 to 1111 and is printed in black and white on paper that no newspaper would dare to display on today. It was made by bikers for bikers. Marketing hadn't been invented yet. And 'a manager' was usually an official in a dustcoat, a company manager.

And then there was already the tension between the citizenry and us, motorcyclists. In number 4 out of 58th volume, we read the response written by publisher/editor-in-chief Harmsze to an article in the Volkskrant:

evil fantasy

'Sometimes there are complaints that motorcycle and motorsport receive too little attention in the newspapers. But sometimes there is an outlier. The information may be incorrect, but we get some attention. In the Volkskrant last Saturday, however, there was pure malice in the reporting. There, employee Henk Strabbing apparently reacted to a nightmare, which must have made him very anxious. For he wrote pure nonsense based on distortions, inaccuracies and a twisted, unabashed fantasy.

It was all about the Elefantentreffen and its initiator, our unsurpassed employee Ernst Leverkus. That even the first lines in which 'Klacks' is proposed are already wrong is up to that point. That's just proof that Strabbing writes with a strange grudge about something he has no knowledge of, or interest in, and certainly hasn't done his homework.

But then the writing degenerates into malicious insinuation

“In 1953 Ernst Leverkus came to mind. He wondered how many 600 cc Zündapps would still be driving around in Europe of the type with which Hitler had left for Russia. Leverkus wanted to do old glory, well 'glory?' see each other.

Because of its soft green paint and impressive appearance, the name Groene Olifant was given to the Zündapp KS601, which was presented after the war in the early 1950s as the successor to the KS 600. These machines had nothing to do with the special 750 cc army Zündapps. with their driven sidecar wheel. Those powerhouses, by the way, were dull-grey in color.

So there was no connection whatsoever between that sidecar, WWII, and the ascribed Nazi sympathies of Leverkus, who was drafted into the army at the age of 17 and spent most of the war in captivity. The maddened Strabbing also saw the winter meeting as an ode to Hitler's activities in the Russian winters and possibilities for espionage. Strabbing thus continued to prove that wappies and conspiracy theorists are not a very modern invention for quite some time.”

In the early XNUMXs, publisher Harmsze concluded that he would rather have no publicity about motorcycling than this kind of publicity.

But what particularly spoke to the re-reading of those old motorcycle magazines was the love and passion of the magazine makers. Their innocence too. Our innocence. And the fact that the technical questions section asked whether you should use chalkboard paint or stove black to cosmetically upgrade exhaust pipes and mufflers. Whether it was normal for the left piston to break every 650 km on a British 11.000 cc twin.

BMW's R75/5, the Honda CB750 was also still current… That Ducati came with a 750 cc L-twin. The presentation of the Moto Guzzi V7 sport, the first cheering test of Honda's CB500 Four, the driver test '564.340 km with the Zündapp KS 100′. Presenting the 650 cc Ural combination for ƒ 3.695.

You know what I do when I finish reading that pile of old paper? Then I just start again.

Ah: And the fact that I canceled de Volkskrant has nothing to do with Mr Strabbing's misadventures. But the delivery of newspapers as a daily newspaper apparently falls under the law on games of chance. Due to weather and wind and before dawn for just over a tenner per hour all-in is apparently inspired by neo-liberal thinking. But you don't get newspaper deliverers for it anymore.

Happy people who have such a dirt cheap subscription to Auto Motor Klassiek have or are still being served on time.

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11 comments

  1. I myself had a zundap with a sheet steel frame where the tank was clamped in between, but when the gearbox gave up, dumped in a sand hole behind the house, a shame, but yes that was the case at the time

  2. With such articles, de Volkskrant lived up to its nickname as a pickle.
    Delivering newspapers has never been a high paying job. The undersigned has delivered the AD, 11 km and 55 addresses, an hour of work and six times a week makes 24 a month for 120 and later 130 guilders.
    The main reason I did that job was that I could keep Saturday off, while a number of classmates had part-time jobs in a shop.

    I occasionally bought the Motor magazine in the loose sale, for example when something was written about Ducati and otherwise in the run-up to the TT in Assen.

  3. I'm still too young to be able to remember all those beautiful things mentioned. In any case, you can see in everything a glorification of German thought and action in war. For another hobby I have a signal generator that was built by Philips during the war for the German occupier. A Dutch aircraft with German lettering. It's just an 80 year old working tool I need to fix receivers. Do I have to throw that thing away because of the history? Or is it a monument to the terrible occupation? So let them drive, those Zündapps in which some still see the occupier of yesteryear. I don't see any harm in it, just the fun of that technique and driving it. Nothing wrong with that, right?

  4. For those who want to see & read it for themselves. I have thousands of motorcycle magazines here from 1970 to 2010, and after that some single issues and years…. everything classified by date and in magazine holders. Motorcycle, Moto 73, M&T, Big-Twin, Motorcycle Rider, and many others…. I am getting older and my health is failing. My kids are not motor minded at all. So I would like to pass them on…. Who dares? also@telenet.be

  5. And can you imagine the discussions when the wife again proposes to finally clean up all that old mess. She still doesn't get it. But the fact remains that if you start with a pile of old motorcycle magazines, the clock goes much faster. Before you know it, you've lost an entire afternoon in one fell swoop

  6. Motor, then the only motorcycle weekly in the Netherlands. Bought it every Friday at Nijmegen station when I went home for the weekend. I think the price was about 50 ct then, around 1967.
    All songs saved, but unfortunately loaned to a friend, who lent them to another friend and never seen again.
    Weld it from front to back, incl. advertisements. Good articles on how to drive a sidecar and how to properly mount it. And every year report of the Elefantentreffen on the Nürburgring in Germany.
    With only black and white photos and a lot of enthusiastic text, in which it was honestly stated what people thought of it. Even if it was nothing at all. Some magazines no longer seem to dare to do that.
    Homesickness does not yield much, but the good memories remain, thanks to publisher Piet Nortier, editor Han Harmsze, assisted by Guus vd Beek, who later dared to start the magazine Fiets.

  7. The most beautiful thing that "Motor" produced were the TT editions with fantastic drawings of what was "spotted" in the paddock or at the technical inspection. Impressive drawings of a brake drum (double leading shotte) with cooling opening or of an engine varying from a Norton Manx, NSU 250, Jawa 500 (which Driekus Veer could use as guest rider) and of course the MV Agusta.
    Great to remember, thanks for bringing up the memories, where a place has also been made for Piet Nortier.

  8. I personally have been walking this globe for 76 years now. Of course I also read Motor because as a motorcyclist you were a member of the KNMV and therefore automatically a subscriber.
    You also knew the name Harmse (with the first name Han) and as a loyal member you also received the book “50 jaar TT” from Han Harmse. Beautiful time.

  9. And ... yes I have the stack of the magazine "Het Motorrijwiel" complete except for the years
    1993-1994 -1995.
    Does anyone still have them and do you want to get rid of them, I'm recommended.
    Wonderful to reread it.
    Pierre.

  10. 10 bucks an hour?
    Count on 5 Euro per hour.

    And if you are interested, I have here another volume or 5 from the late 50s early 60s…
    Once from my father..

  11. What could be nicer than getting lost in an (old) (motorcycle) magazine stack on days when the sunshine falls from the sky?

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