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More stuff from Colleen. Dig this; a 1954 Victoria Bergmeister.
“What the **** is that,” you say? At first glance you may think the bike is a product from Mandello, Italy, but this is not a Moto Guzzi. It’s a Victoria Bergmeister, owned by Cam Greguske from Wisconsin. This model gained considerable success in hill-climb trials and was regarded as a suitable side-car machine.
Like many motorcycle manufacturers of the early twentieth century, Victoria originally produced bicycles and was one of the first to produce motorcycles, beginning production in 1901. After WWI, the company specialized in bikes with horizontally-opposed, twin-cylinder engines, similar to BMWs of the day. In 1920, Victoria launched the model KR-1, which had a 497cc BMW twin-cylinder side-valve flat twin (boxer) mounted longitudinally in the motorcycle frame. In 1923 Victoria switched to self-designed two-cylinder OHV flat engines with 497cc. They later expanded to 597cc.
In 1926, a supercharged 497cc Victoria flat twin set the German speed record with a run of 102.5 mph.
Victoria’s Nuremberg factory was destroyed during WWII and when production finally resumed after the war, the company concentrated on two-stroke machines. Victoria’s first four-stroke bike, unveiled in 1951, didn’t actually go into production until more three years of designing and testing. It was the 346cc, OHV, transverse v-twin Bergmeister like this one:
After Victoria was bought and sold a couple of times in the 1950’s and ’60’s, they made bikes under different names and stopped producing motorcycles in 1966.
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Nice looking bike. Your right, looks more Italian then German. Like the new layout of website
Thanks, ahamay! I worked hard to make the site look cool. Now I’m trying to spur discussion and be more informative about metrics than anywhere else!
Victoria was a PREMIER motorcycle producer wjich also invented the side car way back in 1907. They had absolutely nothing to do with anything Italian. TAhe reason people are generally surprised is, they have been kept in the dark about german motorcycles, which led the world in 2-stroke technology and in terms of production, leaving the British and Italians far behind. The german motorcycle industry was killed deliberately for political reasons, not financial ones.