MEGOLA SPORT? WHY?

Any rally driver will tell you that front wheel drive is The Business when it comes to getting grip in slippery conditions. Torque steer? Well, yes – it can be a problem persuading the front wheels to point in any other direction than straight ahead when you’re trying to feed herds of horsepower through them – but that’s what power steering’s for, no? So, why not an FWD bike, with handlebar leverage replacing the servo steering, and a front tyre twice the size of the rear one to deliver that extra grip. If Fritz Cockerell were alive today, chances are he’d build a Superbike just like that. Instead, 70 years ago, he built the Megola.

The Megola was the product of a consortium formed by three German engineers, MEixner, GOckerell (who confusingly later spelled his name with a ‘C’) and LAndgraf – hence the name of the company which was founded in Munich in 1921 to commercialise the two-wheeled design produced the year before by Fritz Cockerell. This originally featured a three-cylinder engine located in the rear wheel, soon replaced by a five-cylinder one, but by the time production began Cockerell had hit on the novel idea of switching the motor to the FRONT wheel! Well – not totally novel, for in fact the idea had already been tried out not long beforehand in Britain, where Radco had produced an abortive FWD prototype in 1919. But wherever he got the idea from, Cockerell was firmly convinced that this was the Hot Tip in motorcycle design, and backed his hunch by putting the Megola into production. In spite of the many compromises the peculiar engine location entailed, which nowadays would be sufficient to prevent anyone even building a prototype of such a bike other than out of a perverse desire to be different, no fewer than 2000 Megolas were built and sold during the