Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128137
~~~~.ii==MZ RT125 The new MZ RT125 • a modem-day replacement for the forme. East German company's Communist-era two·strokes. survive under the MuZ name, producing limited quantities of street singles powered by bought-in engines from Rotax and Yamaha, MZ has not only now re-adopted its historic identity with a change of name which is more significant than the mere dropping of a lowercase vowel, it's also gone back to first principles. BY ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS By KYOICHI NAKAMURA fter being written off as dead in the water more times than Bill Clinton, Germany's MZ is finally back in business - this time, apparently, for real. With the resources of Malaysia's giant Hong Leong conglomerate now behind them, the former DDR's leading motorcycle brand - justly renowned as the creators of the modern two-stroke Grand Prix racer, underpinned by the 80,000 contrastingly cheap and cheerful stroker streetbikes that annually poured out of the giant Zschopau factory near the Czech frontier during the decades of Communist rule - has now finally reinvented itself, after a difficult decade learning to swim with the tide of capitalism. So after a tricky transition period dating from 1992, during which the restructured company struggled to 18 JANUARY 16. 2002' cue • To cater for the market created by the European Union's 11 kW rule, which provides for motorcycles (and scooters) producing up to this amount (about 15 hp) to be ridden by car drivers without a separate motorcycle license, MZ has produced a modern-day successor to its former range of proven but primitive twostroke workhorses, which improbably achieved a semi-cult following in the West during the communist era. That may have been as much for their artificially low price as for any inherent qualities, but the fact is that MZ built n .. _ s e up a loyal following over a quartercentury amongst those for whom two wheels and an engine meant reliable transportation, rather than sporting allure. The collapse of the Iron Curtain, and subsequent sale of two-stroke tooling to Turkey, spelled the end of MZ products of rugged repute - as well as the start of the dole queue for any more than the handful out of MZ's 3500 workers whom MuZ founder Petr-Karel Korous managed to employ in his company's new, purpose-built factory at Hohndorf constructed in 1994 with reunification funds underwritten by the West German taxpayer. Korous' brave MuZ gamble ultimately failed, with little more than 2500 bikes ever built in a single year by the company's 200 workers - a productivity level that was doomed to failure in the modern, mechanized, market-economy world. But government money kept the dream alive, until in the end Hong Leong automotive division boss Ron Lim was sufficiently attracted by MZ's potential to make a takeover bid for what remained, which saw the Malaysian cars-to-ceramics conglomerate assume 1DO-percent control of the German company's equity in September 1997, retaining Korous as chief executive. As its new company president, the canny Lim immediately identified MuZ's problem as twofold: product, and image. "MuZ had not succeeded in reinventing its core product," he says, "and its reputation was still tarnished by memories of the smoky old twostrokes and their primitive technology. This was undeserved, because Mr. Korous had developed a fine range of four-stroke models, espe-