How Ernst Degner Sold MZ Two-Stroke Secrets to Suzuki Motorcycles

By Mat Oxley
Published on February 9, 2012
article image
Cover courtesy Haynes Publishing
The compelling story of how Japan's biggest motorcycle manufacturers stole a Nazi rocket scientist's engine secrets from behind the Iron Curtain. In 1961, with the Cold War at its height, East German motorcycle manufacturer MZ was using World War II rocket technology to win Grands Prix, only for rider Ernst Degner to defect and sell the secrets to Suzuki. The following year Suzuki and Degner made history by winning the world title.

Ernst Degner is about to sell MZ’s two-stroke engine secrets to Suzuki Motorcycles for the title of World Champion of the Grand Prix. Degner contemplates signing the contract and organizing the freedom of himself and his family from East Germany during the height of the Cold War in this excerpt taken from chapter 7 of Stealing Speed: The Biggest Spy Scandal in Motorsport History (Haynes Publishing, 2010).

Jimmy Matsumiya placed the needle on the record and the needle found its groove.

I’m burning like a flame dear
I’ll never be the same dear
I’ll always place the blame dear
On nobody but you…

He turned away from the gramophone player, lit a cigarette, sat down in the corner of the modest little hotel room and waited. Moon-faced Jimmy Matsumiya was what his contemporaries might have called a ‘hep cat’: Cambridge-educated, urbane Anglophile, eye for a nice piece of cloth, liked to hang out in jazz clubs. He was also Suzuki’s fixer in Europe, paid to navigate his employers through the strange ways of the western world. Now Matsumiya was all set to pull off the biggest industrial espionage heist in motorsport history.

There was a quiet knock-knock at the door. Matsumiya got up, opened the door and Ernst Degner quickly brushed past into the room. As they shook hands the German looked slightly agitated.

“Hello Mr Matsumiya. We’ve got ten minutes,” said Degner, turning this way and that, not sure where to sit. Matsumiya sat down on the small bed and invited his visitor to take the only chair.

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-880-7567