A little more than a month ago, an example of the world\u2019s first gasoline-fuelled production motorcycle sold at a Bonhams auction. This particular 1894 Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller, engine number 69, is thought to be the earliest example of a motorcycle that you or I \u2014 or, more accurately, our ancestors \u2014 could have bought just by walking into a shop. It sold for almost \u00a3200,000, or more than CDN$300,000.<\/p>\n
Now, the Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller is not the world\u2019s first production bike. There were some \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t say plenty \u2014 steam-powered two-wheelers operating as much as 30 years earlier. Nor was it the first gas-fuelled motorcycle, that honour belonging to the famous Gottlieb Daimler\u2019s gasoline-engined Einspur built in 1885. But that was a one-off.<\/p>\n
The Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller \u2014 with estimates of its entire production being anywhere between 800 and 2,000 \u2014 was the first fossil-fuelled production motorcycle. In other words, it\u2019s the perfect foil to look back at how far we\u2019ve come, lo these last 129 years.<\/p>\n
The first thing you should know is that the world\u2019s first gasoline production bike was a four-stroke, not a two-stroke ring-a-ding. A four-stroke twin, in fact, its displacement a hefty 1,488 cubic centimetres.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean it was a powerhouse. Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller boasted just two horsepower. Even more incredibly, its redline was barely 240 rpm. As we\u2019ve recently covered, you can walk into any local Kawasaki store today and, with less than CAD$10,000, buy a little ZX-4R, which, if you Woolich ECU-flash its silly restrictions, will spin to 16,000 rpm. Our idle is five times yesteryear\u2019s redline, and even a cheap little tiddler can spin almost 70 times as high. If you\u2019re looking for the shortest possible synopsis of piston-powered modernity, you need read no further.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not all its pre-Mesozoic absurdities. Transmissions, clutches and chain drives not yet invented, Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller bypassed the whole \u201cpowertrain\u201d shebang and just connected the pistons directly to the rear wheel. Indeed, the rear wheel is both the crankshaft and the flywheel. You see, the connecting rods go all the way from the horizontal cylinders to the rear wheel, where there\u2019s a slight offset arm \u2014 the crank \u201cjournal\u201d that creates the \u201cstroke\u201d \u2014 that connects to the rear axle which, as I said, works as a crankshaft proper. That, as I mentioned, means the solid rear wheel also doubles as the flywheel. And, no, there\u2019s no clutch. One presumes that, at the dawn of motoring, there were precious few stoplights and the few interruptions to forward travel could be handled by doing donuts until the obstruction passed.<\/p>\n
The other thing that intrigues about this most ancient of production bikes is its hot-tube ignition system. Before the advent of the first spark plugs \u2014 and the magnetos that triggered them \u2014 combustion was initiated by what was essentially a Bunsen burner. Yes, you read that right. That most primitive of heating devices, the ones that were included in the \u201cages 3 to 6\u201d chemistry sets of my youth, is that which ignited the fuel mixture on the compression stroke.
\nEssentially, said Bunsen burner heated up a tube, usually made of platinum, protruding into the cylinder wall. Start-up required firing the Bunsen burner with methylated spirits, shutting down the system literally required blowing out the burner and the placement of the tube in the cylinder wall determined ignition timing. Said timing was, no imagination needed, neither rapid nor accurate; hence that redline of 240 revs.<\/p>\n
Nor was it particularly reliable, the ignition systems of the day requiring frequent repair. Thankfully, that required little more than replacing a wick or, in a pinch, the entire platinum tube. Occasionally, one of the asbestos washers that sealed the tube-cylinder wall interface \u2014 you wouldn\u2019t want to lose any of the meagre compression the Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller boasted, now would you \u2014 would fail. But you could diagnose that by \u2014 don\u2019t try this at home, kids \u2014 by pouring gas into the cylinder and then lighting a match near the suspected leak to see if the spewing gas caught fire. Ah, the good ole days; when men were men and mechanics self-immolated!<\/p>\n
The Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller wasn\u2019t all crudity. The engine, for instance, was liquid-cooled, a technology that would not become fully commonplace until at least a hundred years later. Better yet, the rear fender served as radiator, a weight-savings even the latest superbikes haven\u2019t yet mastered. And the oil was carried in the frame. Yes, despite Erik Buell\u2019s claim to innovation, the world\u2019s very first production motorcycle used its frame tube as an oil reservoir. Ignition systems may have come a long way, baby, but oil tanks, not so much.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, top speed was limited to 50 km\/h and braking accomplished by a wooden block rubbing against the front tire. Startup was pushing the bike fast enough for the combustion process to be initiated and then hopping aboard. In other words, the starting line procedure of early Grand Prix racing.
\nWe live in a golden age of internal combustion motorcycling, the lowliest of production bikes far beyond even the imagination of the earliest engineers. Let\u2019s hope that the electric motorcycles that are claimed to be our future progress at an even faster pace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little more than a month ago, an example of the world\u2019s first gasoline-fuelled production motorcycle sold at a Bonhams auction. This particular 1894 Hildebrand and Wolfm\u00fcller, engine number 69, is thought to be the earliest example of a motorcycle that you or I \u2014 or, more accurately, our ancestors \u2014 could have bought just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2439,1876],"tags":[2443],"yoast_head":"\n