Raking through the archive at Mortons for background on Maico for this feature brought to light some interesting revelations which maybe some people will know and maybe others won’t. In the mid-Fifties for instance the FIM proposed a championship for 250cc MX machines, by all accounts it was not over-enthusiastically received and sort of fizzled into life for 1957 when seven-race series took place with rounds in France, East Germany, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Italy and Luxembourg.
No one in officialdom referred to it as a championship, there was no official crown, yet this didn’t stop Maico from claiming their rider Fritz Betzelbacher as European champion in their publicity material. He was backed up by Willy Oesterle and the two riders effectively topped the series, as far as Maico were concerned they were European champions. Possibly the public would view this claim as legitimate too as the political machinations of officialdom are often lost on the rest of us.
Sadly for Maico this feat was short-lived and they entered a long, dry spell of little success and seemed destined to be a footnote in MX history. Then in 1969 MotorCycling’s Mike Bashford was invited to try the 360cc Maico which was to be imported to the UK along with its 250cc stablemate.
