I Know I Featured A Motorcycle Only Yesterday,

but when I saw this one,

 I just had to post it, at first glance I thought it was a Ural M-72, one of the 10,000 or so made in the Second World War, but I was wrong, this for Me, dreamy motorcycle and sidecar, is in fact a Puch P800, in the midst of the false calm between the two World Wars, the then twenty-nine-year old Puch bicycle, motorcycle and moped manufacturer was merged with Steyr and Austro-Daimler, forming the Austro-Daimler-Puchwerke, by 1934, its innovative designs and quality handiwork saw it become the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Austria and again undergo a merger, this time with Steyr-Werke AG to form the Steyr-Daimler-Puch conglomerate,

 two years later and at their peak both creatively and financially, they created the P800, it’s a clear and impressive statement of just what they were capable of, clearly, Austria’s reputation of being the most technologically advanced country in the world during the 1930s wasn’t far off the mark,

 the Puch P800 was equipped with a 4-cylinder boxer engine that was capable of propelling the bike to speeds of up to 125 km/h (75mph), despite the fact that the model was designed for civilian needs and police, its increasingly positive reputation meant that it was soon drafted into use for the Austrian army and was later happily adopted by the transport-hungry Wehrmacht,

 I just love the girder front forks, and here is the thing, the P800 was available in both two and three-wheeled variations, which was unusual for motorcycles of this age and type, but the most interesting feature of this model was, of course, its engine, fired with a battery-type ignition, the 4 cylinder power plant was neither a V4 nor a perfect flat four, as it used an ‘almost flat’ 170˚ angle to space out the opposing cylinder banks,

clutch duties were carried out inside the rear wheel’s hub through a four-speed manual gearbox with a chain drive on the left side of the bike, amazingly the friction coupling was not between the engine and the transmission, but inside the hub of the rear wheel, and it’s a multi-plate clutch, both radical and ahead of it's time,

so with Europe’s descent into war in the late 30s, the release of the P800 stopped at around the 550 unit mark, far from being safe, many of those bikes were subsequently confiscated by the German army, and then destroyed in the bloody battles of WWII, at present, there are no more than 90 examples in existence, it’s little wonder, then, that the P800 is considered to be one of the most rare, classic and collectable of all the Puch masterpieces, the one featured above is one from the Motorwold collection and stunning it is too, the paintwork and lining is to die for, would I like it? Yes please!

as an aside, this is the Ural M-72 which is what at first I thought I was looking at, and the good news?

 you can still buy a brand new Ural today,

complete with sidecar, and wait for it!

two wheel drive, so you can have fun doing this,

or this!