Sadly the MZ Motorcycle factory, which had been producing motorcycles since 1922 closed its doors on December 12th 2009, announced MZ’s Malaysian owners early last month.
MZ stood for Motorcycle Works Zschopau, from the town in the Ore Mountains of Germany where the company was based. MZ generated losses for Hong Leong Industries since being taken over in 1999. Some Say it was the lackluster designs of the later MZs that doomed sales. They looked like badly done 125 Honda four stroke knock-offs you’d see in Malaysia btw. Hmmmm.
Hong Leong spokesman Gerhard Wurtmuller said high material costs and the high price of labor doomed MZ to close, as the factory has been running in the financial red for the last few years.
I remember MZs as being stogy International Six Day bikes that weighed about 300 lbs, and had air bottles in the toolkit. “A real ugly Maico” summed it up. But, did you know that MZ was once the original DKW motor company, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of WWII, dismantled and re-named MZ? Forever lost behind the Iron Curtain? Didja?
Let’s take a look at some MZ bikes, past and present. You’ll be amazed, if not slightly nauseated. We’ll skip the real early ones, because they’re DKWs, and we’ll just concentrate on the ones after 1956. The commie ones.
1959 1959 RT125. Wow, real modern...
1957 ES250. "Nuff said there amigo. Nice front fender. 
1970 MZ with a sidecar, or a footbath. Can't decide which. Things get stranger though
Gag. 1966 250 headed for the landfill.
I give up. After finding even more STRANGE MZ motorcycles I'm kinda glad they went down the tubes. Shows what communisim does to stuff. Some of these bikes are nightmares, and deserve to be buried deep away from human eyes. I'm going to try and forget all this.
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