Münch Mammoth: Germany’s First Superbike Featured A Four-Cylinder Car Engine

Summary

• Germany’s first superbike, the Münch Mammoth, had the most powerful motorcycle engine of its time and could reach speeds up to 120 MPH in top gear.
• The Mammoth featured chassis innovations like a magnesium front brake and a sealed drive chain, but it had a reputation for chewing through rear tires quickly.
• Over 500 Mammoth motorcycles were produced, with a large number imported to the US market, and a special project called the Titan was built in the 1980s with a supercharged 1,800 cc engine.

Today, Germany has only one superbike that we’re all aware of; the BMW S1000RR. But over the decades there have been quite a few German manufacturers with products that were quick by any standards. Maico is one of the few current ones with the world’s biggest, baddest enduro machine, and Kalex has been the dominant force in Moto2 for a while now.

DKW, NSU, Kreidler, and Zundapp are all familiar names to people over a certain age. But Germany’s first superbike came from a manufacturer named Münch, and the motorcycle was called the Mammut, German for ‘mammoth’ – a hint at what the engine was like.

Ensuring accuracy for this article was a mammoth undertaking, but we did it, with the help of reliable sources like Bonhams Auctions, Motorcycle Daily, and CycleWorld.com.

The History of the Mammoth

The ’60s Were Where It Was At

The Mammoth’s roots can be traced back to Freidl Münch, who loved modifying motorcycles in the 1940s. He was a racer himself, and when a big accident cut short his riding career, he turned to tuning motorcycles for other racers. He used to modify products from brands like Horex, and then went on to work officially for them as well.

Münch was contacted by Jean Murit, a motorcycle sidecar racer from France who had a dream of creating the world’s most powerful production motorcycle. Remember, this was the late 1950s, when Germany wasn’t economically stable and most of the big-name motorcycle companies were all closing shop. Not only was the aim to have the most powerful motorcycle, but it had to have the quality of engineering and craftsmanship that was worthy of the best motorcycle in the world. And so began the story of Germany’s first superbike.

A Mammoth Engine

In the 1950s, the fastest motorcycles in the world were all running parallel twins. They were usually British racing motorcycles (over here in the US we did love our V Twins, and they weren’t too focused on power output or speed), so the choice of a four-cylinder engine is a very surprising one. Friedl Münch opted to pick an already-developed engine rather than build his own to save costs. An NSU air-cooled inline-four was chosen from one of its small cars, the 1000TT, to power the first Mammoth.

The Mammoth Highlights

• Most powerful motorcycle engine at the time
• Could do 20-120 MPH in top gear easily
• Kept chewing through rear tires

The car company agreed to supply its engines for the motorcycle. It developed 55 horsepower from its 996 cc inline-four, and you could choose from one, two, or four carburetors. It would be a few more years before the Honda CB750 Super Four would debut in 1967 and the term ‘superbike’ would be coined, but it is no coincidence that the biggest motorcycle company in the world chose to follow in Freidl Münch’s footsteps with their engine choice – a transverse air-cooled inline-four-cylinder engine.

Chassis innovations

Light Materials Were Used On The Mammoth In The ’60s

The chassis was something that needed to be all new to fit a car engine into it, but again, financial constraints meant that it couldn’t be designed completely from scratch. Münch decided to work with the best-handling motorcycle of the time, the Norton Featherbed, and customize the frame to his requirements. And customization it would require, because the motorcycle ended up weighing 480 lbs. That might seem much by today’s standards, but it was incredible back then given the motorcycle’s history, since the Norton Commando weighed 420 lbs.

There were a number of innovations that remind us of Erik Buell’s mad genius – the front brake was a colossal 250 mm unit made of magnesium. Interestingly, it was used by Norton for racing applications. On the first show bike displayed in 1966, the left side of the swingarm was the casing for the drive chain. It was a sealed unit which allowed the chain to be run in an oil bath, thus not needing lubrication from time to time. The drive chain also had a chain tensioner that allowed the slack to be adjusted quickly and easily. In later iterations with larger, higher output engines, the rear wheel had to give up spokes for alloy, since no spokes could handle the torque delivered to them.

Bigger, Better, Faster

The Engine Grew – So Did The Power Output And Top Speed

The original engine didn’t remain for the entire run of the Mammoth; in fact, the engine was upgraded soon enough to another NSU engine that displaced 1,177 cc and, if you wanted, could put out up to 104 horsepower. To put it into context, the Honda CB750 Super Four that we keep referring to here displaced 750 cc and generated 68 horsepower. Oh, and that 104 horsepower was thanks to mechanical fuel injection – the Mammoth also happened to be the world’s first motorcycle with fuel injection.

The previous 996 cc engine was incredibly flexible, with the ability to accelerate without complaint from 20 MPH to 120 MPH; the larger engine was more of the same torquey goodness. The chassis remained similar to the original, keeping weight down thanks to the extensive use of magnesium alloy for the fork sliders, chain case, gearbox shell, and as mentioned above, the brakes and the rear wheel. The only real problem with the Mammoth had been rear tire wear; there didn’t exist a tire that could last more than 1,000 miles with the power and torque of the engine.

Münch in the USA

Quite A Few Examples Made It Here

Over 500 examples of the Mammoth had been built by the end of its production run in 1975, and a large number of those were imported into the US market thanks to Floyd Clymer, an American entrepreneur. It was marketed as the Clymer-Münch Mammoth IV and sold for nearly $4,000 when the BMW R69S cost $1,700.

Of course, that is the price one pays for exclusivity, handcrafted perfection, and lightweight materials like magnesium and aluminum. There also were plans to manufacture models with a 750 Indian Scout V twin engine, but only a single prototype was ever built with that powerplant. There were also plans to manufacture a Mammoth with a 3 cylinder two-stroke machine with 90 horsepower, but these plans never saw the light of day.

The Mammoth 2000

Friedl Münch’s Last Design

The original Mammoth’s production run ended in 1975, but a special project was built and completed in the 1980s called the ‘Titan’. It had a 1,800 cc engine with a supercharger, made 160 horsepower at 7,800 RPM, and used oil cooling instead of water cooling. The last design that Friedl Münch made was called the Mammoth 2000. It was named after the year it was launched, but it could just as well have been named after the displacement of the engine: the Münch Mammoth 2,000 displaces 1,998 cc, and just like the original Mammoth, was derived from a car engine. It was a GM Ecotec engine designed by Saab, and Münch saw its application in the Opel Vectra.

Then they got Cosworth to design the head, and they changed all the water cooling to oil cooling. The result with a turbocharger? 260 horsepower at 5,650 RPM and 280 pounds-feet of torque at 3,500 rpm, although the redline was 8500 rpm. Top speed was limited to 156 MPH, but the company claimed it would top out at 172 MPH without the restrictor. We suspect that with a shorter top gear, it would have been capable of much more, but the brakes would have had a rough time stopping its 780 lbs.

At the time, the Mammoth 2000 retailed for over $80,000. Only 15 were ever originally built from a planned production run of 250, with a few more being built with parts after the remaining stock was sold. It’s safe to say we will not see the likes of the Mammoth again – the mammal or the motorcycle.

Münch Mammoth 2000