Last week, I revisited the Visscher Classique car museum in the Netherlands. Their collection is far from static and has clearly been expanded since my previous visit in August 2023. This time I also took some photos of the museum’s moped collection.
By no means I’m a two wheeler expert -oh understatement- so I just put the pictures on the table. The global CC knowledge base is immense, after all.
On one end of the line-up, a 1972 Puch MV50. Lookin’ for adventure!
Standing on the other outer end, a Zündapp KS 50 (water cooled). This is exactly how I remember the Zündapps from my high school years, the late seventies and early eighties.
Back then, the brand was considered as the Mercedes-Benz among the moped manufacturers. That was the general consensus in my neck of the woods, anyway.
Upstairs, another friendly moped gang gathers.
This must be their captain, a 1965 Benelli Super Sprint.
Meanwhile, a 1956 BMW R26 had just returned from a test ride. Certainly not a moped, because 247 cc. But it’s simply way too nice to leave out…
…which also applies to these two, by the way.
Hi Johannes
That takes me back, in the mid 70s in the UK motorcycle style mopeds were all the rage and could be ridden at 16.
We couldn’t wait to get motorised transport in the 5th form in school. My first was a Puch M50, effectively a 50cc motorbike as it was virtually impossible to peddle them, they were known as sixteener specials. Went out for a ride with friends virtually every night , middle of winter, freezing weather did not stop us so was the urge to explore.
In the UK in the mid 70s, teenagers did not have cars, way too expensive, this is what we dreamed of, the next step was the 250CC motorcycles usually bought by those who left school and had apprenticeships and an income. They could be ridden on a provisional license with no training or test at all, the death rate on these was so high that the law had to be changed, I lost three 18 year old friends on these.
We wouldn’t be seem dead on the traditional moped , it has the be the fastest motorbike type ones and the faster the better, the main ones were the Yahama Fizzy, Honda, Fantic, and Garelli, I do not remember ever seeing a Zundapp, the link below
https://carpyscaferacers.com/mopeds-1970s-owned/
Thanks for the link. Zündapp, Kreidler and Yamaha were the most popular 50 cc mopeds for the 16+ guys when I was at high school (the Dutch equivalent, that is).
The Puch Maxi was the preferred choice for the young ladies.
40 km/h was the legal max. speed outside built up areas. Yet most guys had a souped-up moped with a top speed somewhere between 80 and 100 km/h. Many serious and lethal accidents, indeed.
In the UK there was no speed limit on the mopeds, of the motorcycle types, top speed would be in the 50s mph, the very fastest would be near 60 mph. It felt quite quick after a bicycle
The other thing was that you would ride flat out for miles everywhere except for 30mph on town roads. I was amazed the engines took it, the piston was just the diameter of a British 10 pence coin
The 250cc Japanese motorbikes could approach 100mph and had very good acceleration, especially the 2 strokes. That level of performance without any training or tests was just asking for trouble, especially with the poor handling Japanese frames at the time
Speaking of the BMW R26, in the late 50s John Penton rode a modified version to enduro victory in the US. In the late 60s John persuaded KTM to build a bike to his design and they were marketed here as Pentons. They did so well that KTM dissolved the partnership and marketed them under their name and they are know one of the largest sellers of motorcycles worldwide. /that is my butterfly flapping it’s wings and changing the weather on the other side of the world story of the day!
Thanks!
Prior to that John Penton rode an NSU bike with “sewing machine” ohc actuation via connecting rods. He believed in smaller displacement while everyone else was riding 500’s. A true pioneer and legend and there was a movie made about him maybe 10 years ago.
Great picture. I wouldn’t want to race against him.
Always had a soft spot for the R26; they were quite uncommon in the US. Too expensive to compete against the Japanese, which were lighter and cheaper.
In 1972 a friend brought back a Motobecane moped form a trip to Paris. This was well before the big moped boom in the US. It wasn’t legal in Iowa, because it didn’t have a brake light, so I rigged one up for him. Bought a brake light switch to attach to the brake lever, put a 6V battery in the saddlebag, and mounted a basic tail light on the rear. It passed and he could register it as a motorcycle. I rode it several times; it was the only one in Iowa City at the time.
Quite the specialty in Iowa City! Mobylette and (Vélo)Solex are the only Motobécane connections I can make right off the top of my head.
I remember the rather brief burst of popularity mopeds had here in the US in the second half of the 1970s. They were quite common in cities (DC and NYC were the cities I frequented at that time), not so much elsewhere. Puch and Motobecane are the brands I most recall seeing.
In a way, these have had a second coming – now called electric-assist bicycles.
Has the ‘souped-up’ Fatbike (e-bike type) already got a bad reputation in the US?
Way too young kids (not fully developed brains) going way too fast. Naturally, without wearing a helmet.
certainly has a bad reputation with me, almost got hit by a maybe 11 year old with no helmet yesterday as a matter of fact. I’ve seen a few going down my 25mph street doing about 50 but they don’t last long, I figure Darwian evolution culls them.
That’s exactly what I’m referring to! Corners and bends, another specific problem: literally flying off the bike path or pavement when doing 50 km/h or faster with an e-bike-type-fatbike.
Horrible accidents happened with 50 cc mopeds just as well, but at least you had to be 16 and wearing a decent helmet was required.
At least innocent bystanders could hear 2-stroke mopeds coming. E-bikes offer an entirely different level of danger to the public, when they aren’t burning down NYC apartment buildings.
Yes, it’s a bad thing here too. Here in Boston – and I suppose other cities – we have an issue with people in fully-electric scooters (that can I guess go close to 30 mph) riding in bike lanes and presenting lethal hazards to cyclists.
Likewise, when I was on the Erie Canal trip (that I’ve written up here on CC), we were informed that there was someone who was attempting to set a trail record on one of those and who had an entourage of fellow scooters who were riding ahead of him to clear the path. He had announced this on social media and that was his un-doing as the authorities were on to him and attempted to shut him down (it’s illegal to ride a fully motorized vehicle on the bike path there). Apparently that worked, as he never materialized.
I attended Alberdingk Thijm College in Hilversum in 1984. The best of the brommers at the time were Hondas. The most popular one was the SS50, and the aspirational one was the MB5. The MT5 motorcross brommer was popular too. I believe they were made in Belgium at the time. They were quite responsive to tuning. I rode an MT5 that would indicate 100 kph, and the police sent inspectors to campus to stick feeler gauges down spark plug tubes to make sure that the engines of fast brommers hadn’t been bored and stroked. There were plenty of Motobecanes, Sachs, Puchs, and other more pedestrian models. I don’t recall seeing any Derbis in the Netherlands, but they were high end mopeds in Spain. Hondas were also popular in Germany, where the MBX80 and MTX80 could be seen due to different laws.
It is kind of sad to see the registrations from this website and how little is left of what was once a thriving youth culture, before the reign of the EU bureaucrats. https://www.brommer.nl/alle-brommers-in-nl/
Thanks for that link!
I really doubt if EU bureaucrats had anything to do with the downfall of the whole bromfiets/moped culture. They just went out of fashion and style, replaced by the utterly generic two- and four-stroke ‘scooters’ (as we call them here), these are still very popular among the young guys and girls. Riding around in immense numbers, both in and outside cities/towns.
The tall, dirt bike looking 50 cc Hondas were pretty much the last gasp of the bromfiets scene.
I covet that Zundapp. A local brewpub has a Honda MB5 cafe racer on display, ideal for living your GP fantasies while never exceeding the speed limit. The MB5 and the Yamaha YSR50 are the only tiddlers sold in the US in significant numbers
Plentiful Yamaha ‘mopeds for guys’ around here, say 40 to 50 years ago. Must have been the FS1-series, also stated in the link Paulson posted above.
According to Dutch Wikipedia, these were available on our market till 1983 (which was also my last ‘high school’ year).