How Suzuki stole communist technology to make their motorcycles faster

during the 1960s something drastic happened within the world of engine development that literally changed the course of motorcycle and engine design forever and it helped put the Japanese manufacturers on the map globally and it's called the two-stroke [Applause] [Music] while the two-stroke had always been there it's more what happened to the two-stroke see this simple engine configuration went from powering small utilitarian scooters and motorcycles to powering the fastest race bikes in the world but most people myself included prior to reading this amazing book called stealing speed by Matt Oxley well most don't know how or why and it turns out it's one of the craziest stories in motorcycle history our story starts in post-war East Germany with two characters Walter cotton known as the father of the modern two-stroke engine developing the technology for the East German motorcycle manufacturer MZ and another character named Ernst stegner the standout rider for mz's race program ultimately this was a sort of Cold War Story the battle between not only communist and capitalist ideology but also engine development and race technology and the short of the story is that MZ really had the upper hand as sort of an underdog their two-stroke 125 was the first race engine both in cars and motorcycles to make 200 horsepower per liter without supercharging now this transformation of the two-stroke that was happening at MZ a company that you've probably never heard of for reasons we'll see shortly well that came about because of secret leftover technology learned during World War II from Germany it's important to understand that the Germans were innovating in terms of many different forms of engineering both before World War II and during World War II so after World War II A lot of these Engineers were very sought after and just getting a hold of the information and the technology that was being developed by Germany was really important for so many countries now Walter cotton mz's lead engineer had worked for Nazi Germany in development specifically of Hitler's V1 cruise missile the first weapon of its kind named Vengeance weapon one by Hitler this was a solo waterborne missile capable of 400 miles per hour this missile was powered by a simple combustion engine known as the Pulse Jet carrying just enough fuel to make it to London and Hitler he wanted a bunch of them with the later versions of the V1 essentially being his hope for winning the war the Allies gained intelligence of this long-range weapon capable of mass destruction as just one V1 could potentially lead to four thousand deaths and the fact that the V1 was now being mass produced in Germany at a secret facility meant that they wanted to stop this so the Allies bombed pinamunde the place where all of this r d for the V1 was taking place and this was the home at the time to engineer Walter cotton who managed to survive this attack so this was August 18 1943 now like many Germans at the time cotton was not a Nazi at least not by choice he was primarily a motorcycle Enthusiast having worked at dkw developing two-stroke technology prior to the war now cotton survived the war along with the famed German engineer Warner Von Braun who as is known went to work for NASA German Engineers like I said were highly sought after with the overlap of World War II and the Cold War war and cotton wasn't sure he would survive as the war came to an end ultimately he had the option to go to the U.S with Von Braun but he chose to stay in Germany a decision that would turn out both good and bad for him by 1945 cotton was home in Choppa Germany now controlled by communist Russia the Russians were mainly searching for the secret home of dkw the Innovative German motorcycle and car manufacturer that had won the lightweight Isle of Man in 1938 with their two-stroke 250cc Lada poupee I'm probably not pronouncing a lot of these words right but forgive me cotton had grown up around the buzz of dkw in his hometown and that was his workplace prior to the war but after the war his hometown of Choppa was crawling with Russians and he had no desire to become a prisoner of war in Russia like so many other Germans so he hid in his house while his wife would go out and scavenge for food and steal potatoes and stuff in 1946 cotton and a friend started their own business making wooden roof components but riding around on a small dkd W two-stroke bike was his favorite pastime now he started racing the little bike and slowly started working to basically make it faster using what he had learned working both for dkw but also his development of engine technology under the Nazis but in 1952 Cotton's private Workshop was all but cut off from materials like any private Enterprise at this time in East Germany see cotton wasn't just not a Nazi he also wasn't a communist either he just wanted to move on with his life he didn't care about politics but he was given a job at dkw again this point IFA you know they changed the name but ultimately it would turn into the company MZ now this was kick-started by the Soviets as they wanted Germany to compete for automotive dominance once again cotton was to head up the new motorcycle race team see they'd seen him flying past the old dkw factory on his little old 125 two-stroke and they saw that that bike was going quite a bit faster than it probably should have now at this time and really through his entire time with MZ he worked in entirely primitive conditions Germany was in shambles at this point after the war there really wasn't much left of the country and this really was A True Underdog Story what he was able to do and his first job was to build a batch of 125 CC race bikes for their team and for local Racers so he would work all day long every day this was what he loved doing and a lot of innovation happened at this point working on these little two strokes one of those things being you know adding rotary valve induction which is one of the key parts of how he was able to make two strokes faster and make them work but at its heart the main innovation made from cotton at this time had to do with the very nature of what an internal combustion engine is and the main difference between a two-stroke and a four-stroke see cotton understood something very few engineers at this time did and that is that a two-stroke isn't simply half of a four-stroke in its function while a four-stroke is essentially a pump with four phases you know suck squeeze bang blow or you know more properly induction compression combustion and exhaustion Matt Oxley writes that the two-stroke lives and breathes on resonances and harmonics pressure waves and other mysterious forces cotton knew that the two-stroke engine functioned more like an organ than a pump the two-stroke delivers twice as many power strokes as the four-stroke this is why later on down the road as two strokes took over racing Honda's only way of combating the onslaught of Two Strokes was to make their four-stroke machines rev past 20 000 RPMs if they could get twice as many revolutions they would then be able to match the power strokes of a two-stroke prior to Cotton's work though the two-stroke suffered from a few shortcomings in comparison at its core making more power from an internal combustion engine is about stuffing as much air and fuel into the combustion chamber as fast as possible and this is what two strokes struggle with so cotton began to incorporate what he learned from working on Hitler's V1 into the two-stroke problem because because that Pulse Jet Engine was pretty similar and had similar problems and figuring out how to make the Pulse Jet go fast was very similar to figuring out how to make a two-stroke go fast he figured out a way to harness the sound waves in the exhaust to create more power as had been done on the V1 missile creating his own unique exhausts finding 20 percent more power essentially overnight he was essentially supercharging the engine for free basically having a larger space for the exhaust to get to quicker meant more room for the gas air mixture to fill up within the combustion chamber this was Caden's crowning achievement perfecting the structure of the expanse chamber fixing the exhaust phase problem in the same way that his rotary valve had fixed the inlet phase so at this point all that two-stroke goodness was finally starting to be captured and utilized but any slight change to the exhaust's cone angle would change the power significantly and even change where the power was delivered and so these odd looking exhaust systems they were anything but Pleasant to look at and they still really aren't on powerful two-strokes but they were handmade and perfected to get the most power possible and all of this done in horrible working conditions with sparing supplies and materials the resources just weren't there it wasn't like he was backed by some incredibly wealthy team I mean they didn't even have a dino for which to test power output they would just make changes and then ride the bikes around and see if they felt faster it was sort of an art form at this point in 1955 the team set out for the German GP at Nurburgring that is very hard to say for some reason because it's I'm wanting to say Nuremberg but it's Nurburgring anyways at this point Envy Augusta was the reigning King of the 125 ccgp class the complete opposite in terms of Team makeup and structure to that of MZ the German company that cotton was representing while Envy was literally Ran by A Count funded by endless old Italian money over in communist Germany cotton scrounged for decent tools and materials everyone who saw the MZ team 10 at the Isle of Man Would gawk why is this sad little commy team wasting its time with these outdated two-strokes now the little two strokes didn't beat the Envy augustas on their first go but they did come in fifth and sixth place surprising everybody and going into the 56th season they decided to sign a new Young talent to ride their bikes Ernst dagner and this is the other main character for the story The 56 and 57 season weren't good for MZ despite their small improvements again in the area of resonance and exhaust but in 58 after continued ongoing work on the two-stroke platform working to sort of eek every bit of horsepower out as possible he now had a 20 horsepower 125 and degener the rider was getting faster and faster every time they came in fifth at the TT and then they got their first Podium at Nurburgring always behind the MV4 strokes but getting quicker then a few weeks later the team scored their first GP win at the Swedish Grand Prix 250cc class it's interesting to me that they got their first win at the Swedish Grand Prix as we'll see later we come back to the Swedish Grand Prix and that's where the story it kind of culminates there cotton wasn't done yet though despite his two strokes revving higher than ever overheating was keeping them from really gaining horsepower these bikes were always on the verge of blowing up so cotton scoured old dusty textbooks like a wizard trying to solve a problem in a fantasy story and he discovered a system utilized in the 1930s by zundapp on a two-stroke system whereby oily gas was fed through an extra port to the often overheated small end bearing underneath the Piston really with two strokes it's about getting the oily parts of the gas oil mixture to go where you want it and this solved that problem of always overheating to his Marvel not only did he keep the engine Cool It produced another 10 power so this extra transfer Port increased the volumetric efficiency essentially getting more gas into the cylinder for more power altogether his Innovations were such a rotary valve an expansion chamber and now a boost Port as we know all of these things over about five years cotton by himself had done more Innovation than all of the big manufacturers and his bikes were continuing to get faster so 22 horsepower was now coming out of the mz125 they had a serious GP Contender on their hands with this bike and with degener so the MZ started beating the four strokes and famed Riders were waiting in line for a try but crashes and a lack of money really left them with no big Rider and Ernst stegner was really their last hope at winning a title he was just as fast as anybody in the smaller classes but he was also a bit of a selfish arrogant guy racing during this time was rough Grand Prix Riders died every month sometimes two a month in 1951 just as one example Moto Guzzi lost its two main Riders during a test lap for a race one Rider ended up so far ahead of his teammate and he thought that his teammate had crashed so he turned around to go find him and the two Riders crashed head on and both were killed there was loads of problem obviously woefully inadequate gear a careless approach from race organizers a lot I mean it was just a perfect storm for fatalities and injuries and writers just died all the time now the writers would deal with this reality differently but for degner he wanted out and it wasn't just that he didn't want to crash and die he wanted out of East Germany despite MZ treating him as best as they could providing him with housing and you know the best cool car that they could afford for him as sort of a celebrity in East Germany MZ could not pay him his worth regardless of his performance and he just didn't like looking over at all the big Riders from different countries and how they lived like absolute celebrities driving around in you know Aston Martins and Ferraris and it was The Perfect Storm for betrayal for degner meanwhile over in Japan Suzuki was struggling the m Z's were too fast for everybody and Suzuki's Two Strokes they just weren't good despite their size and resources as a company they simply hadn't figured out what cotton had but hope was there they knew Two Strokes could be made to go fast they just didn't know how to make them go fast and they didn't want to take on the years of research necessary to figure out what cotton had figured out and you know just because you have a bunch of people working in a bunch of Engineers you can't pay your way to figuring these kinds of things out and it's more than just one setup that works all the time you know these two strokes would always have to be fiddled with and cotton fit all sorts of extra features like a lever to control and change the mixture on the go so while you'd be riding you'd you know head up a hill and the elevation would change and you'd change the mixture just a bit it was a very complex thing riding these race two strokes in the 60s he even had an engine kill button used to power down the engine between gear shifts essentially that was a precursor to the modern quick shifter now Ernst degner the racer for MZ he knew these machines inside and out and he knew two-stroke technology better than most cotton was essentially his mentor and going into the 61 season he began to take even more interest in learning the inner workings of the mz-125 race machine the team was delighted with this but they didn't know that degner had other motives it was June of 61 at the team hotels for the Isle of Man TT where degner struck a deal with Suzuki's fixer Jimmy matsumiya and the deal was this all of Cotton's secrets to making two strokes more powerful and in return a whole bunch of money for degner to defect from the Communist GD art and also to race for Suzuki Matt Oxley the writer of this awesome book that you guys should go by he calls this the biggest industrial Espionage heist in Motorsport history never before as far as we know have race Secrets been stolen so brazenly now cotton wasn't done at this point the mz125 kept getting faster and his mz's we're winning the championship at this point 25 horsepower was being produced from this bike at this point the championship was all but theirs Not only was this bike now making 200 horsepower per liter everything was updated with proper modern features modern frame and suspension everything was better on the bike this secret meeting in June was degener's first face-to-face meeting with Suzuki's team and the deal they struck was essentially this ten thousand pounds and a factory Suzuki ride for the 62 World Championship now this was a lot of money back then a lot especially for a factory Rider almost 10 times what the other Suzuki Rider would get Suzuki would need to see the full 22 horsepower on their 125 bike for the full 10K to get paid out and this was why degner was spending so much time this season with cotton working on the bikes he had to know them inside and out to be able to replicate it for Suzuki's bikes now East Germany was bad at this time and degener wanted what the Western Riders had freedom and just a better life and in 61 they did start to have problems engines were blowing up somewhat suspiciously it does seem that degner was trying to win though it wasn't like he didn't want to win the championship but on August 12th with the championship all but his the Berlin Wall went up overnight initially a barbed wire fence dividing families and making his Escape impossible but then obviously they quickly started pouring concrete and turning it into a giant wall now a friend and co-conspirator in the Suzuki deal named Paul Petry helped get his family out of East Germany first and the plan was then that he would defect from a different country for a different race now the Swedish Grand Prix is where it all went down for degner MZ and cotton had every reason to be confident in the 125's ability to win the race which would have essentially won the championship for them this track was set up for bikes with a lot of power and a lot of speed shortly after the race started degner was way ahead and then he disappeared the engine on his bike had blown up and with degners soon escape from Sweden MZ would never see the chain championship at this point if he had won that race it would have been theirs if he had raced the next few races it probably would have been theirs but early in the morning the day after the race in Sweden degner met with matsumia with a secret bundle of not only the engine specifications for the mz125 but even various parts like a piston and rotary valve and crankshaft so Suzuki had what they needed and in 62 with just a year of development they took their first Grand Prix title with dagner in the new 50cc Grand Prix using Cadence tech for two-stroke development in 63 they would then take the 125 and actually take the top seven places of the 50cc class the two-stroke technology pioneered by cotton would slowly take over Grand Prix racing and really build the Japanese manufacturers into the companies that they are today to the demise of cotton and MZ there is no Suzuki without Cotton's work it's a key part of the racing history and business reputation starting during these competitive times in the 60s without their two-stroke technology Suzuki wouldn't come out of the Japanese Market as one of the big four they proved themselves on the racetrack but they did it with stolen Tech it's funny Suzuki says in their video series on their racing history that Ernst degner had an active role in development which as one commenter points out that's just a really nice way to describe corporate Espionage over the next decade Suzuki would battle Honda in the four-stroke two-stroke War but slowly even Honda's high revving machines found their match as the two strokes got bigger and faster Suzuki took their first 500cc Grand Prix win in 71 with a two-stroke the first two-stroke to take a victory and this was really the beginning of the end you know two strokes would dominate until they were then banned in GP decades later of course the other manufacturers would have figured it out some way I mean this Tech wouldn't have just stayed hidden with MZ but what happened down the road for MZ and cotton is a different story you know it didn't end up good for him being in East German at this time with their main Rider defecting to another country and who knows what would have happened to Suzuki in their struggles to keep up we might not have the Suzuki we have today without their racing success in the 60s and 70s built on the back of stolen research and development you can't help but wonder if the Big Two Strokes from Suzuki and Kawasaki would have ever even been built without this theft but in the end Suzuki though a Pioneer on their own and certainly deserving of much of their success though at this point today they're definitely falling behind as one of the laziest manufacturers in motorcycling you wonder if that DNA was already there back in the 50s and 60s you know when Honda was putting in the hard work and spending the money necessary to innovate and win championships Suzuki just decided to try and Skip all that and steal someone else's hard work I was going to end this video with a harsh critique of Suzuki today contemplating even further if maybe the original lazy Spirit behind this Heist 50 years ago isn't still present today but I think if anything I hope that this this video reaches people who would otherwise not know about cotton and his work if you have ridden or you currently ride a fast competitive performance-oriented two-stroke in any capacity you owe something to MZ but MZ doesn't get any of the credit we all look back at the great Kawasaki and Suzuki two-strokes of the 70s but really it all started with MZ even if you ride a little or big two-stroke dirt bike that has that specifically shaped exhaust to create power from the engine that all started with Walter cotton and MZ so if anything I hope this video is a way of remembering him and yeah it's just kind of a crazy story in motorcycling history I hope you guys enjoyed it make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and check out some of my other similar videos but yeah I hope you guys enjoyed we'll see in the next one ride safe

Channel: bart

Views: 717,875

Keywords: bart, motorcycle, motorcycles, vintage, retro, classic, top, best, worst, moto, bike, motorbike, how suzuki stole communist technology to make their motorcycles faster, suzuki, mz, walter kaaden, ernst degner, race, racebike, racebikes, history, motorcycle history, honda, mv agusta, kawasaki, yamaha, 2 stroke, two stroke, most powerful, engine, engines, race history, motogp, moto gp, 500cc, 125, 50, 4 stroke, greatest, craziest, fastest, mz 125, story

Id: 1qccejmqbPg

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022