Bubbling over – the cost of Messerschmitts
In the July issue of OBM I was somewhat taken aback by the estimate of over £20,000 applied to a 1960 Messerschmitt KR200 entered in the forthcoming Canterbury Auction Galleries sale.
In the 1960s I had the misfortune to have to work on these machines when they came in for repair at the motorcycle shop in King’s Lynn where I was a mechanic. Considering the small engine, they went very well, but to stop them was another matter altogether.
On carrying out an MoT test on a bike we had this spring balance rig bolted to the workshop wall. A wire cable was hooked around the tops of the fork legs and one person sat on the bike operating the brakes while an assistant cranked a handle reading off what little stopping effect was achieved by the brakes of the time. In the case of enclosed three wheelers, or ‘bubble cars’ as they were called, we had another hightech device which consisted of a wooden box enclosing a rotor which had calibrations around its circumference that could be viewed from above through a small window. To test the brakes the device was placed on the floor of the car where the driver could look down on it. After setting it to zero the car was taken up to a certain speed and then the brakes were applied – hard. The rotor would turn and the brake efficiency could be read off the calibrations.
Except, try as we might, we could not obtain anything near the required stopping power when testing a KR200. The brakes were truly dreadful. In fact, I didn’t think that any KR200 would survive beyond 1971, let alone still being around in 2021 with a price tag of £20,000 plus!