Lost but preserved, this factory racing Megola remains a rare and honest witness to that fearless early age of motorcycling where it was all about experimentation.
Words: Rich Orriss
Photos: Jürgen Häffner
I still remember the first time I saw a Megola fire into life. It was at the 2024 Vintage Revival at Montlhéry. The incredible motorcycle was parked up on display, and I patiently waited for what felt like an eternity for the owner to rock up – and when he did, I refused to leave until he had fired the beast up. It was an odd experience – no crack from an exhaust, no familiar pulse. Instead, the front wheel itself woke up with a very unusual mechanical whirr and spin. It felt less like a motorcycle running, but more like a piece of precision machinery. I stood there, properly mesmerised, and if I am honest, a bit confused about how it all functioned.
That moment stayed with me, because the Megola is not just unusual. In the right context, it is quietly monumental and one hell of an eccentric machine.
Built in Munich between 1921 and 1925, the Megola placed a five-cylinder radial engine directly inside the front wheel of a motorcycle, dispensing with clutch, gearbox or chain. Even today, it looks like something that escaped from an alternative future.
The mind behind the Megola project was Fritz Cockerell, an aeronautical engineer whose background in aircraft engines shaped every aspect of the bike. The finance came from Hans Meixner and Otto Landgraf, whose names – along with Gockerell (this was his real name) – were woven together to create the name MEGOLA. Apparently this play with text is called a “portmanteau” – a new one on me! Anyway…
At the heart of the motorcycle was a 637cc five-cylinder, four-stroke, side-valve radial engine. It was fixed to the front hub and rotated with the wheel itself. If you are interested, the cylinders rotate around the front axle at six times the speed of the wheel. Rotary engines were already familiar in aircraft circles, and known for their compactness and power delivery. Cockerell applied the same logic with the Megola. Fuel mixture, ignition and lubrication were all integrated into a single, remarkably compact unit. Power output for road machines was around 14hp at 4,500rpm – modest on paper, but delivered with exceptional smoothness.
The development path of the Megola was anything but straightforward. Early experimental machines placed a three-cylinder engine in the rear wheel, and the motorcycle evolved through prototypes before settling on the now-famous front-wheel layout. Initial designs relied on complex and awkward intake routing, with mixture travelling through hollow fork components, making reliable carburation difficult. Only with the final five-cylinder front-mounted engine did the concept achieve workable integration.
Starting and stopping, however, remained an issue. With no clutch and no gearbox, the Megola had to be pushed, or have its front wheel spun by hand to bring the engine to life. Later developments even proposed a two-speed hub gearbox and clutch but these refinements never reached series production. This brilliant video shows the Megola wheel in motion, and a running start to get it spinning down the road.
The Megola was offered in several forms.
The Tourenmodell was aimed at everyday use, weighing around 130kg and capable of approximately 90kph. Once moving, riders praised the bikes comfort, elastic engine characteristics and excellent road holding, aided by rear suspension and a well-considered riding position. The drawback came at the first stop, where pushing off once again became part of the ownership experience.
Unusual features on the production models included two fuel tanks. The main tank is hidden inside the bodywork, and the fuel from it is hand-pumped to a smaller tank above the engine.
Marketing literature leaned heavily on reliability. With no clutch, gears, chain, belt or shaft, there was little to break in the conventional sense. Even tyre punctures, common in the 1920s, were addressed with ingenious open ended inner tubes. Rather than a being a conventional donut shaped tube, they were a circular sausage shape which meant that it could be removed without dismantling the entire engine wheel assembly – imagine the headache! At the time, this type of tube was produced commercially so it was likely not created especially for the Megola. Megolas came well-equipped, with a fuel gauge, tachometer and ammeter as standard equipment. There was nothing else that looked like this motorcycle.
The Sport model trimmed weight, shortened the frame, and adopted a sportier riding position. It shunned the rear suspension in favour of better road holding and was able to reach speeds close to 140kph. Gear ratios could be altered by fitting different wheel sizes, particularly useful in hill climbs and competition work. Despite these improvements, lubrication challenges inherent in a total-loss rotary engine remained. Oil tended to migrate outward at higher speeds, sometimes fouling spark plugs and combustion chambers, albeit later engines addressed this with revised spark plug placement and cylinder design.
Megola’s most convincing argument came on the racetrack. The factory racing machine produced around 20 horsepower and weighed just 100kg.
In 1924, former fighter pilot and works rider Toni Bauhofer rode this very Megola to victory in the German Road Championship in the over-500cc class – the first time that championship was ever awarded.
Bauhofer himself was cut from the cloth of the early inter-war racing generation. Born in Munich in 1892, he trained as a mechanic before the First World War interrupted everything. During the conflict he served as a reconnaissance and later fighter pilot. When peace returned, men like Bauhofer carried those traits straight into motorcycle racing. Speed, danger, and machines pushed to their limits were familiar territory.
By the early 1920s, Bauhofer had become one of Germany’s leading riders, and his association with the Megola factory team proved decisive. Alongside fellow works riders, he demonstrated that this wildly unconventional motorcycle was not a novelty act. In 1924, riding this very Megola, Bauhofer took the German 500cc road championship – defeating more orthodox designs and better funded rivals, including BMW. It was a victory that validated the Megola’s engineering philosophy in the most public way possible.
That philosophy still looks audacious today. The Megola’s five-cylinder, side-valve rotary engine lives inside the front wheel hub, the entire assembly spinning around a fixed axle. There is no clutch, no gearbox, no chain, and no rear brake. Power delivery is smooth and continuous, almost turbine-like, but the compromises are severe. You push-start it. You plan your stops carefully. For Bauhofer to race such a machine, and win a national championship on it, speaks volumes about both rider and the motorcycle in question.
What makes this particular Megola even more remarkable is what happened after its racing career. Like many important competition machines, it vanished and was lost for a few decades until it resurfaced.
Its post-war chapter adds a bit of warmth to the story. In 1957, the Megola was ridden by Richard Fröschl on the 2nd Veterans’ Trip to the German Two-Wheeler Museum in Neckarsulm. By then, it was already an artefact from a previous era, yet it was still being used, still trusted to cover distance. Period photographs from that journey show a championship-winning racer transformed into a veteran pilgrim.
Today, the Megola resides in the NSU Museum in Neckarsulm, a fitting home given the town’s central place in German motorcycle history. The machine is cared for by a small group of deeply committed motorcycle enthusiasts, who actually oversee a trio of Megolas in the museum (there are only around 15 known to survive in total).
Standing back at Montlhéry in 2024, watching a Megola come to life, it struck me that its appeal goes far beyond clever engineering. It represents a moment when motorcycle design had not yet settled into convention, when bold ideas were tested not in boardrooms but on race circuits. Toni Bauhofer’s championship win proved that the Megola was not just merely different – it was good enough to beat the establishment.
Thanks to Sven at the Deutsches Zweirad- und NSU-Museum Neckarsulm for the support with this article.
an article by The Girder Club
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