MÜNCH MAMMOTH IV
Behemoth of a bike – a superbike before the term was invented
The Ferrari of motorcycles’ is how the Münch Mammoth was described by Floyd Clymer. ‘It is a luxury highway machine for which there is no parallel in the world’, added the great mover and shaker of the American automotive world (profiled on page 12). Well, he was trying to promote sales of this extraordinary machine after investing money in the company, but the main tagline of his adverts in the US press rang with the most truth: ‘Built up to a standard – not down to a price.’
That exceptional build quality was down to the German design engineer who envisioned the bike – a man with very different attributes to Clymer’s self-publicising showmanship, entrepreneurial skills and business acumen.
Friedel Münch was born in 1927 in Dorn-assenheim in the Hesse region just north of Frankfurt. He was already an experienced technician by the end of World War II, when he opened a small motorcycle workshop in the premises of his family business with financial aid provided by a student scholarship. Like Clymer, he was a passionate enthusiast who raced motorcycles as a young man, although he gave it up after a crash to concentrate on machine development.
Having raced modified Horex single-cylinder bikes and gained experience preparing race bikes based on the German company’s Imperator twin, tales of his talent for tuning reached the ears of the firm’s bosses. They subsequently hired him to work in the R&D department of the factory, which was just 20km from his home, in 1955. Unfortunately, a year later it closed down, but Münch had the presence of mind to purchase the tools for engine production and a large amount of spare parts.
It was in the early ’60s that his dream of developing a very special machine that would take motorcycles to a whole new level of performance and luxury, edged towards reality. He started to make sketches of a four-cylinder, inline engine and designs for wheels with high-performance drum brakes for racing applications. At that time, the German motorcycle industry wasn’t facing a promising future. NSU, based in Neckarsulm, two hours’ ride south of Frankfurt, had produced 350,000 bikes in 1955, making it the world’s number one company in terms of production – but it closed down the bulk of its motorcycle operation in 1963 as it switched from two-wheelers to small cars to reflect the changing demands of the mass market. It continued to manufacture the NSU Quick 50 – but even that was discontinued in 1965. That same year saw the launch of the NSU Prinz 1000
car – but, unlike NSU which was dropping bikes to go into cars, Münch was planning to drop this car’s engine into his dream bike. The Prinz’s air-cooled 996cc inline four-cylinder engine was just the kind of power unit he had in mind for his ground-breaking motorcycle – and Münch started to build his first large-capacity bike around the 55bhp singleoverhead-cam, two-valves-per-cylinder motor.
At the time, Ernst Leverkus, editor of the leading German magazine Das Motorrad, was calling for a manufacturer to produce a motorcycle that could ‘haul a sidecar over distance at a constant speed of 130kph [80mph] and would only have to be overhauled after 100,000km [62,000 miles].’ So Münch took on the task of creating a bike that met those criteria, developing the chassis from an adaptation of his Horex Imperator retro-fit racing frame, heavily influenced by Norton’s famous Featherbed.
He created a special oil pan for the NSU engine and employed clutch and gearbox components from the Horex Imperator and NSU Max motorcycles. Components including the swingarm, rear subframe and wheel hubs were cast in Elektron magnesium alloy – stronger and approximately 40% lighter than aluminium – by the Schenk foundry in Maulbronn. Clymer was later to call this metal a ‘space age’ material, although it had first been developed in Germany in 1908!
The official roll-out of the Münch motorcycle took place on February
28, 1966. Leverkus was the first journalist to ride it – and he immediately nicknamed it ‘Mammut’ (Mammoth) due to its expansive dimensions. Leverkus’s test report gained a lot of attention all over the world and Münch received hundreds of enquiries. But, before delivering the bike to his first client, the famous French former sidecar racer Jean Murit, Münch rode it to the NSU factory in Neckarsulm to show it to the surprised managers – who subsequently agreed to an ongoing supply of engines. Münch’s monstrous motorcycle was never to be officially named the Mammoth, however – that moniker was owned by Erhard Doppelt, a moped manufacturer from Bielefeld, so it was sold as the Münch TT. The prototype was followed by a first series of 14 bikes that featured an enclosed oil-bath chaincase which formed part of the swingarm and had an integral hydraulic chain tensioner, along with a Münch-designed ‘turbine’ magnesium rear wheel to handle the power of the NSU engine (the front wheel was spoked, with a massive 10in [250mm] cast magnesium drum brake).
This was a hand-crafted machine, tailored to the requirements of individual customers, that involved timeconsuming fine-tuning of the engines in the pursuit of more performance. It was very expensive to manufacture – and, as Friedel Münch’s engineering skills far outweighed his business acumen, he had set the bike’s price tag of 7000 deutschmarks too low, so bankruptcy soon beckoned. This was when Floyd Clymer stepped in to save the day – he invested 200,000 deutschmarks and exerted pressure for an export push to the USA in a bid to promote the bike as the flagship model of his rejuvenation of Indian Motorcycles, marketing it as the Clymer-münch Mammoth IV.
Münch used Clymer’s money to further develop the bike. In 1968, he fitted the new 1177cc NSU TTS car motor into a revised machine, which he called the Münch IV 1200TTS, with a claimed power output of 88bhp. It was originally fitted with a pair of twin-choke Weber 40DCOE carburettors, but the mechanical fuel-injection system he developed with German firm Kugelfischer was made available from 1973, with the model designated Einspritzer (the German word for injector) and developing 100bhp. Inveterate fettler Münch also redesigned various other components of the bike, with further improvements including forks specially made by Rickman and a self-supporting cast rear end, replacing the previous tubular subframe.
After Clymer died in 1970, the American millionaire George Bell took shares in the company and a new motorcycle factory was built near Friedberg, just north of Frankfurt. Then, in 1971, the company went bankrupt, although it was resurrected soon afterwards with the support of the German Hassia packaging company. Every bike was still being custom-made, now by a staff of 40 employees, but by that time Japanese, Italian and British large-capacity rivals were muscling into the market – at much more competitive prices than the Münch. In 1973, for the second time, the company filed for bankruptcy and the German businessman Heinz W Henke took over the firm, which continued to produce motorcycles until 1980. Over the years, a total of less than 500 Münch four-cylinder bikes had rumbled out into the world. Friedel Münch left the company in 1975 and continued to work on customer bikes and special editions, pushing up displacements and making use of turbochargers and superchargers to increase performance. Development climaxed with the Münch Titan2000 of the late ’80s with a 2000cc supercharged engine, a dry weight of around 370kg and a 38-litre fuel tank!
In 1991, Friedel Münch suffered a stroke, but that didn’t keep him from designing a modern Münch 2000 motorcycle for the German businessman Thomas Petsch in the late ’90s. The first bike was presented in April 2000 and featured a 260bhp four-cylinder inline engine with a Cosworth cylinder head, weighed in at 354kg dry and had a top speed limited to 250kph (155mph). A total of 15 of these bikes were constructed until Petsch pulled the plug on the unprofitable project in 2002.
Friedel Münch died in 2014, but his outrageous creation will live on forever in the annals of motorcycle history – as the Mammoth, regardless of whether someone else already owned the name. This single-minded engineering genius
‘IT WAS NEVER OFFICIALLY NAMED THE MAMMOTH; THAT MONIKER WAS OWNED BY A GERMAN MOPED MANUFACTURER’
produced what many regard as the world’s first superbike – long before the term was even invented, and many years before the British, Japanese and Italian machines tagged with that name arrived on the scene.
Riding the Mammoth
The bike we’re testing is a 1967 Münch TT1100 that was rebuild as a TTS1200 in 1971 after a crash. Starting it is a piece of cake thanks to the electric starter, but it needs plenty of warming up before settling to a steady idle. At low speed the tall first gear and the bike’s top-heaviness are something of a challenge, but as soon as the road opens up, concern is replaced by a grin. The ergonomics are excellent and the power delivery is so linear that the tall gear ratio doesn’t affect the pleasure of riding this exceptional bike.
Precise handling is not exactly the Münch’s forté due to its rather short wheelbase, and ground clearance is limited while cornering because the centrestand grounds out way too soon. On swooping roads at a relaxed pace the bike is a pleasure to ride, though – and the brakes, which were years ahead of their time, deliver outstanding performance.
Once cruising at around 60mph the Münch starts to feel in its comfort zone, with smooth transmission and very little vibration from the engine – so much so, that the rear view in the mirrors stays perfectly sharp. The four-speed gearbox is easy to shift and very precise, although the gearlever has quite a long travel. The third of the four gears available is the perfect choice for cross-country travel, using the wide torque range of the 1200cc engine. The reduced flywheel mass (compared to the car engine) makes for a lively power unit that responds well to throttle input – but also has incredible engine braking if you snap the throttle shut.
You can’t help but be affected by the Münch’s aura of sheer performance – smaller and lighter contemporary bikes may make a better ride on tight and twisty roads, but the rumbling and shaking of the Münch with its twin Weber carbs give it a unique presence, even at idle. It’s a two-wheeled experience quite unlike any other.