Egon Mendel of Tamboerskloof in Cape Town has always been a fan of sidecars, those three-wheeled oddities halfway between a motorcycle and a vintage sports car. He’s also a Harley enthusiast but, when he asked the price of one of the beautifully crafted sidecar outfits built to order by the Milwaukee factory, the response forced him to look elsewhere.
Then a friend in Germany told him about the Ural.
In the years leading up to the Second World War BMW produced the world’s first combination with sidecar-wheel drive for the Wehrmacht. Most of them saw service on the Eastern front, where they impressed the Soviets with their outstanding cross-country capabilities. So much so that they captured one and took it apart with a view to building them for the Red Army.
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After the war BMW went back to making more conventional motorcycles but the amazing R75 lived on as the Ural, built in a truck factory in Irbit, deep in the Russian heartland.
Most of them saw service on the Eastern front.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s made the Ural more readily available in the West where it has enjoyed some success in, oddly enough, Germany. Mendel contacted the German Ural distributor with a view to bringing one to South Africa.
This was not a straightforward procedure; first he was told that he would have to wait nearly six months until the next time the factory would be producing bikes in the particular red that he wanted. Then, when he approached the South African Department of Transport for permits to import privately a brand new vehicle he ran into real trouble.
Since South Africans drive on the left, the DoT insisted that the chair be rigged on the left of the motorcycle, opposite to the standard fitting. Impossible, said Irbit; possible, insisted Mendel. It wasn’t until he was able to prove that right-hand drive Urals were routinely being built for the Australian market that the factory agreed to supply our hero with his dream outfit.
The DoT insisted that the chair be rigged on the left.
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