What is the ‘CJ’?

Depending on who’s telling it, the “CJ’s“story is a good one, which starts when the Soviet Union “stole” a motorcycle factory from the Germans during World War 2.

The Chang Jiang 750 is a copy of the Russian IMZ M-72 motorbike-and-sidecar combination — itself a knock-off of BMW’s own R71 — which helped carry the Red Army to victory on the Eastern Front.

China acquired the tooling in the ’50s and churned out thousands of these machines, which chugged away from Manchuria to the Gobi Desert. A rugged design, it was still widely used in the 21st century and many found their way out of China into private hands in the West.

Tim Clarke and his team at Cape Sidecar Adventures have restored a fleet of “CJs”. It is on one of these bikes that you will tackle the quiet byways of the Winelands and Little Karoo, slow-paced territory where machines like this shine.