1937 Zundapp KKS500
(Page 2 of 3)
July/August 2009
By Greg Williams
That didn’t stop the motivated seller. He proceeded to wire up the bike’s 6-volt system to his 12-volt car battery, and kicked it over. Nothing. A second kick and it started, and Marco was enveloped in thick white smoke. “It popped 10 times, and that was it,” Marco says. “I asked how much did he want for it?” The answer was $5,000. He quickly parted with his cash.
RELATED CONTENT
Think your BMW GS is the ultimate adventure bike? Check out the Zundapp KS750. Built for the German...
Doug Bingham knows all about the attention sidecars draw. In fact, a little more than 36 years ago,...
The Bikers’ Classics is held each summer at the famed Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, in Belgium. Jun...
Not surprisingly, Bonhams’ record-breaking price for the Verrall Vincent is sparking more interest...
Marco still wasn’t thinking about keeping the Zundapp, though. He figured the Steib was worth $2,000, and he could get $3,000 for the Zundapp at a later date. He brought the machine home and proceeded to research the Zundapp. That’s when he hit a wall — hard. “There was nothing about this bike in books or on the Internet,” Marco says.
Rare and unknown
Armed with the serial number, Marco wrote to a couple of Zundapp authorities, one in England and the other in Germany. Their first response was disbelief, but after Marco insisted he had indeed purchased a Zundapp with that particular serial number they informed him he was the owner of a rather unique racing motorcycle, one of only 170 made (see sidebar below).
Not surprisingly, Marco lost interest in selling the Zundapp, and wanted instead to learn more about his KKS500 and its life in Uruguay. To the best of his knowledge, Marco says the KKS500 came to Uruguay in 1937 where it was raced on local tracks. After a useful race life, the machine became a pace bike for bicycle racers on a velodrome track. Then, in 1950, it fell into the hands of a Mormon pastor who lived up in the hills of Uruguay. He installed a rear rack with a pillion saddle and hitched a Steib S350 sidecar to the retired race machine. He used the outfit for some 20 years, traveling the dusty roads visiting members of his congregation.
In 1970 the motorcycle was purchased by a friend of Marco’s family, and stored away until 1990. “That’s when I saw it the first time, when it was for sale at a vintage car and motorcycle show, but I couldn’t afford the $15,000 asking price,” says Marco. Nobody else could, either, but at the end of the show when the Zundapp was being loaded up to go back home, somebody offered $10,000. It went to the owner before Marco, who kept it without doing anything with it until Marco bought it for $5,000 in 2000.
The restoration begins
Sympathetic to the Zundapp’s racing history Marco separated the motorcycle from the sidecar. The KKS500’s pressed steel frame was never meant to sustain the forces of pulling a chair, but remarkably, there were no problems with the frame.
Fairly complete and original as purchased, Marco has attempted to restore the Zundapp as close as possible to its factory finish. The paint was matched to the oxblood color found under the Zundapp logos, and the only thing Marco had to fabricate was the rear upper fender support.