NSU Sportmax 251RS
Alan Cathcart enjoys a landmark ride at Germany’s Oschersleben circuit on one of the two West German-built NSU Sportmax 250s, on which Mike Hailwood took 4th in the 250cc World Championship in 1958.
A 1955 machine that helped the legend that would become Mike Hailwood to some early wins. Here, Alan Cathcart rides both the ‘bird-beak’ and the ‘fullenclosure’ models of this machine.
Not only was Mike Hailwood one of the most successful riders in road racing history, he was also one of the most versatile. For Mike not only raced a huge variety of machines throughout his 23-year career, but he often competed on three or four different makes, capacities and/or types in a single day – from a 125 two-stroke single to a 500 four-stroke in-line four. And in true Hailwood style, he won races on most of them.
Yet at the outset of his career, it seemed that Mike would forever be dogged by the undeniable advantage of being a rich man’s son. Time after time, after he’d proved his riding superiority by winning up to four races in an afternoon in the late 1950s, the critics would scoff that ‘he’s only winning because his dad can afford to buy him the best bikes’. See our feature on page 72 for more.
Stan Hailwood had a well mapped out plan for his son’s racing career, which involved him learning the ropes first on smaller bikes whose hairline handling and relativelack of power decreed careful, precise riding, and a high degree of concentration.
Accordingly, Mike Hailwood’s racing debut came at Oulton Park on April 22, 1957, just 20 days after his 17th birthday, riding a Bill Laceyprepared 125cc MV Agusta to an unremarkable 11th place in his first event.
But June 10 saw the first of countless Hailwood victories, in the 125cc race at Blandford on the same bike. Mike had gone from newcomer to race-winner in just seven weeks, and five races…
Satisfied that his son had what it took to further his ambitions for him, Stan’s plans to progress Mike’s racing career involved him spending the winter racing in South Africa, alongside the experienced Dave Chadwick and mechanic John Dadley.
For machinery, besides a newly purchased 350cc Manx Norton, SW (as Stan was known) used his friendship with rising star John Surtees’ father Jack, against whom he’d raced in prewar sidecar grasstrack events, to ‘borrow’ the 250cc NSU Sportmax on which John had been undefeated in the UK in the 1955 season, winning 20 races in all. John had continued to race the NSU in weekends off from his MV Agusta factory GP rides, winning four races on it in 1957 at Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Scarborough and Crystal Palace. Little did John know that he’d never see his much-loved bike again.
Mike Hailwood continued the NSU’S winning ways in South Africa, scoring victories in all six scratch races he started on it, to clinch the SA National 250cc title unbeaten, with victory in the final round just outside Cape Town on March 29. He then flew back to the UK, having checked in the NSU’S spare engine as excess luggage, at the then astronomical sum of £100.
In the meantime, Stan Hailwood had been busy and besides agreeing a deal with John Surtees to sell him the Sportmax, had purchased a second NSU in January from an ad he’d spotted in Motor Cycle News. This bike
had been bought new from the factory in 1954 by Scottish NSU dealer Glen Henderson, who’d raced it himself since then with some success. It was identical to the Surtees bike, save for the rear brake, which rather than the narrower SLS version in the production Sportmax, was a full-width twin leading-shoe item from the works Rennmax twin, which Henderson had obtained from the factory with the bike. It was duly prepared for the 1958 season by Bill Lacey’s daughter Ann, herself an accomplished engineer and perhaps by no coincidence a close friend of Glen Henderson’s, who’d go to stay with him in Scotland – doubtless to get some hands-on instruction in how to make a Sportmax go faster!
The reason why Stan Hailwood had purchased the second NSU became apparent when, just three days after landing back in the UK and two days after his 18th birthday, with the SA champion Sportmax still on the high seas, Mike finished second on the ex-henderson bike – by now repainted in red Ecurie Sportive colours – at Brands Hatch on April 4, Good Friday, behind local ace Derek Minter on the REG twin, turning the tables on him three days later to win the Easter Monday Crystal Palace 250 race on it.
After further short circuit wins at Castle Combe, Brands and Aintree, Mike then went to Ireland for the first time to finish a close second to Sammy Miller on a similar Sportmax in the NW200. In the meantime the Surtees NSU had returned from South Africa, and its engine rebuilt after the rigours of its winter’s racing, to be used by Mike at the Whit Monday Brands meeting, where he won both 250 and 350 races (the latter on the Manx Norton) and finished second in the 500 race.
He then flew to the Isle of Man to ride the Henderson bike with its works rear brake (hence identifiable in photos) in the Lightweight TT on the Clypse Course, where after a race-long duel with future Honda teammate Aussie Bob Brown on another NSU, Mike finished third behind the factory MV Agusta duo of race winner (and that year’s World champion) Tarquinio Provini, and Carlo Ubbiali – best of the seven NSU Sportmax riders in the top 12. It was the first of 19 rostrum finishes for Mike Hailwood in 12 years of TT racing in the Isle of Man, with 14 of those on the highest step.
Three weeks later Mike rode the exhenderson bike with its Rennmax rear brake to fourth place in the Dutch TT at Assen, in his first foray to Continental Europe. In fifth place behind him was British veteran Arthur Wheeler on his ex-works Mondial, the bike Cecil Sandford had won the 250cc World title on the previous year, which would replace the NSUS in the Ecurie Sportive garage for 1959.
Thereafter, it’s been impossible to determine – through lack of photos – which of the two West German singles Mike rode in other races that season, in which he retired from the West German GP at the Nürburgring with a front brake that locked on so viciously it
bent the axle, before finishing second in the Swedish 250 GP at Hedemora behind Horst Fügner’s fleet East German MZ, after both MV riders retired.
After retiring himself in the Ulster GP when he slid off unhurt on a damp track, and giving the final round of the six-race World series at Monza a miss, Mike wound up fourth in the 250 World Championship in his debut GP season, first privateer in the points table on his NSU production racer, behind Provini, Fügner and Ubbiali. It was an auspicious start to his GP career.
With Mike starting 29 races in the UK in 1958 on one or other of the team’s two NSUS, winning 21 of them in clinching the British 250cc Championship, Stan Hailwood decided to dispense with the two German bikes, having purchased the previous year’s World champion 125/250cc Mondials from Arthur Wheeler, to which he later added a second 250, the exsammy Miller bike, third in the title chase.
First, though, he sent Mike to South Africa again with one of the NSUS and a pair of Nortons for some more winter training, though after winning the first two of his three scratch races there on the Sportmax, Mike was beaten into second place at Pietermaritzburg by Jannie Stander’s 250 Velocette.
Meanwhile, the other NSU was rebuilt to original factory spec, as documented in a classified ad placed by Stan Hailwood in the February 12, 1959 issue of Motor Cycling, where Stan described them as ‘ex-works.’
These were very definitely not works bikes!
Stan’s florid sales pitch failed to shift them, so the NSUS ended up being farmed out for disposal to MV Agusta importer Bill Webster, a friend of Stan’s who’d supplied the MVS that Mike had begun racing with two years earlier – though one NSU was hauled into action again in 1959 for Mike to win his last race on a Sportmax at Mallory Park on May 3, when both Mondials were unavailable for mechanical reasons.
The ex-henderson bike with the 2LS rear brake was duly purchased from Webster by Lancashire bike dealer George E Leigh. A 23year IOM TT regular who wound up finishing second in the 1968 250cc Production TT on a Bultaco, Leigh raced the Sportmax himself for some years, and also loaned it to his sponsored rider, Fred Stevens. It led to Leigh opening an NSU dealership for cars and bikes, though his only Isle of Man TT outing on the Sportmax in 1964 ended with a seized engine on lap three. NSU stopped making motorcycles soon after, so Leigh switched to selling Hondas, which made him a wealthy man, and funded running a team of four Manx Nortons for himself and others. He restored the NSU to as-new condition, before selling it in 1997 to former GP racer Jan Kostwinder, twice Dutch champion in the 1960s, then an IOM TT regular throughout the 1970s, with a best finish of second in the 1973 125cc TT on his Yamaha TA125 tuned by former 50/125GP ace Cees van Dongen.
“I’d wanted an NSU Sportmax ever since my dad Folgert-jan rented one from a German guy to ride in a Dutch 250cc title race when I was a kid – and won!” says Jan. “The fact that when I finally found one it was one of Mike Hailwood’s machines was even better.” Having established the bike’s history, Jan restored it to its red-frame Ecurie Sportive livery – but in preferring to rebuild the bike to its original unfaired condition, George Leigh had sold the aluminium fairing that came with it to someone in Germany. The Audi Museum in Ingolstadt has a fine array of NSU factory racers, and generously lent Kostwinder one of the distinctive ‘bird beak’ Rennmax fairings for him to copy in glass fibre and fit to the Hailwood bike. In this form Jan has ridden the bike in historic events all over Europe for the past 20 years – including in the support event to the Oschersleben World Endurance round, at which he kindly allowed me to try it out for myself.
I’d previously ridden two other Sportmaxes, each with different bodywork arrangements. The Sammy Miller machine in Sammy’s eponymous Museum www.sammymiller.co.uk has the optional full customer streamlining available from 1954 until outlawed at the end of 1957, which is pretty cramped and quite inaccessible for a taller rider like me. By contrast, the ex-baltisberger/dan Shorey NSU Sportmax I rode at Donington Park back in 1982 when I organised the Hailwood Day commemoration there a year after Mike’s tragic death for his friend, circuit owner Tom Wheatcroft, was naked but unashamed, increasing its agility at the expense of top speed.
But this introduced me to what must have been the ideal privateer bike in any class in 1950s GP racing – finely-engineered, longlegged, lazy-sounding, fast yet reliable, albeit with a totally unique riding position.
This sees the rear part of the pressed steel frame not horizontal, but inclined forward at about 25 degrees. Since the flat but quite comfy seat is mounted directly on the frame, this has the effect of throwing your weight forward onto the quite narrow one-piece handlebar. This isn’t mounted in the conventional place, since there are no tubular fork legs, hence no triple-clamps as such, though a large knurled plastic knob does operate the central friction-type steering damper. Instead, the bar’s attached to the front of the fork, about 150mm from the top of the steering head, in between where the two triple-clamps would be on a conventional set-up.
What you therefore have in effect is the twowheel equivalent of a forward-control steering system, which moreover requires extreme delicacy of touch – there’s a propensity to oversteer a Sportmax in tight turns, until you get the hang of it. That’s not to say it’s a bad system – indeed, I found all three NSUS comfortable to ride and quite spacious for a 250, with the relatively low-mounted footrests actually beneath the swingarm. This means you’ll rub your boots on it on the move, and thus remove the paint as Jan Kostwinder has done – though at least you’ll get a good idea of how effective the rear damping is! But riding the Sportmax does take a fair bit of getting used to, and you have to admire men like Surtees and Hailwood who blithely hopped from their NSUS to a Manx Norton and back again, yet won on both.
Sitting on Kostwinder’s ex-hailwood bike showed the Rennmax fairing to be superefficient, giving effective protection to your arms and shoulders as you reach forward to the narrow handlebar which, together with the angled seat, gives a stretched-out, leanedforward stance that is quite aerodynamic. I could just peep over the fairing’s flat screen, with the alloy venturi just beneath it for the 22-litre fuel tank’s breather hose, which Jan leaves off as an unnecessary distraction. then on the Oscherleben straights I could tuck well away behind the screen, using the large sponge insert on the top of the tank to rest the chin bar of my full-face Arai on it, rather than my own chin in those days of Cromwells and goggles. The contoured fuel tank hand-made as on all Sportmaxes by craftsman Georg Buss is what the Italians call an anatomica design, shaped to let you wrap your arms
around it, with flat rear flanks you can grab with your knees.
The 12,000rpm Smiths tacho has a reverse sweep to it – not sure why – but the twin mixture and ignition controls that were squeezed onto the narrow handlebars of the other NSUS I’d ridden were missing from the Kostwinder bike, though today’s starting rollers make them unnecessary, says Jan.
The Sportmax owner’s handbook is very particular about warming the three litres of oil from cold, recommending fresh warm oil to be used for each outing. They went a bit far with the factory Rennmaxes though: these were warmed up with dead engines via a hot air blower and enormous trunking, before hot oil was poured in and the engines fired up. Overkill.
Once warm, the ex-hailwood NSU starts practically just by looking at it – take two paces, drop the clutch and the eager motor fires up instantly, with the long slender chrome-plated megaphone emitting a distinctive crackle as you let in the clutch and move off without the slightest trace of judder and only minimal megaphonitis around 3500rpm – much too low to worry about.
Both throttle and clutch are very light in action, making the engine seem super controllable. The direct-action (no linkage) right-foot gearchange is silky smooth, with a very precise one-up/four-down action – yes, it’s a five-speed gearbox rather than the original four-speeder, which Kostwinder sourced from Austria, made by a protégé of famed transmission guru Michael Schafleitner. This makes it easier to keep the willing little engine on the boil, though there’s a broad spread of power above 4500rpm that builds in linear manner to the 9000rpm redline, where 28bhp
is delivered to the rear wheel. But that linear build means it’s best to keep the NSU motor revving, which the five-speed gearbox on the ex-hailwood bike lets you do.
The gear-change would originally have been fitted on the left side, Japanese-style – indeed, it’s because of the NSU Max road bike that all Japanese motorcycles adopted this, because Pops Honda visited the NSU factory in 1965, and took home a Max 250 to benchmark his future range of Honda streetbikes. The empty gearshaft still pokes through the left-side crankcase cover, just as how photos show Mike raced with it.
I’d expected more vibration from the
250 single motor, for Mike Hailwood once wrote in his book The Art of Motorcycle Racing co-authored with Murray Walker that, while he owed his Sportmaxes respect for the numerous wins and the 1958 British Championship ACU Star they brought him, “while phenomenally fast, its handling although not bad was peculiar, and it vibrated so much that my hands were regularly blistered raw.”
I concur entirely about the handling, but Jan Kostwinder must have spent a lot of time balancing his motor just right, in a way that apparently eluded Ann Lacey. His NSU engine had a smooth, turbine-like feeling with minimal vibration, and it was also remarkably quiet – none of the whirrings and whine of an Italian gear-drive DOHC motor, for instance – and seemingly unburstable, certainly with the 9000rpm rev limit and power all the way from 5000rpm. It was more torquey than you’d expect a 250 single to be, too.
Once I’d got used to the slightly strange steering the NSU handled well – it was more stable than I expected around long, fast sweepers, though to hold a tight line it liked you to stay hard on the throttle to drive through them in a lower gear, which with the five-speed gearbox was always feasible. And it wasn’t unduly nervous in slower turns, though it did change direction very smartly in the two Oschersleben chicanes.
The best feature of the handling was the braking, though – while the Sportmax looks overbraked with that massive 240mm front stopper, it’s only an SLS unit, and proved ideally suited to the 112kg (unfaired) NSU, to the point of being both effective and super-controllable. The leading-link fork that’s fitted on this bike with Girling dampers which slightly scrape the insides of the pressed steel housing’s legs without affecting the suspension means you can trailbrake deep into faster bends while still maintaining turn speed, something I hadn’t expected from this 1950s motorcycle, though the modern Avon tyres do help.
The 2LS rear brake also works very well, and in case it faded, you’d still have a good deal of engine braking from the 9.8:1 compression ratio as a back-up. The only downside to the handling was not the rather stiff settings on the Hagon rear shocks – inevitable, since both Jan Kostwinder and son Marco are rather on the chubby side – but the soft front suspension, which chattered the front Avon on the infield Oschersleben hairpins, meaning I had to back off the throttle to let it recover. But it did handle the car-induced bumps in certain turns quite well.
Stan Hailwood may not have been much liked in the motorcycle paddock, but he started his son off right with this wonderful German motorcycle, which helped shape the career of two of Britain’s and indeed the world’s greatest ever multi-world champions in John Surtees and Mike Hailwood: some training wheels!