A quarter of a century ago rotary-engined motorcycles seemed set to be the next big thing. The Norton RC588 scored victory in the 1992 Senior TT in the hands of the late Steve Hislop at 121.38mph. The Duckhams Norton team’s dominated the 1994 British Superbike championship with riders Ian Simpson and Phil Borley. Norton might have expected to benefit with demand for its F1 Sport street bike but the British company was sliding towards insolvency. Production was soon to shut down of the last Wankel-engined motorcycle money could buy. Until now.
For it’s once again possible to purchase a Wankel-powered street-legal motorcycle. Not from born-again Norton, but from Dutch firm OCR Motors (www.ocrmotors.com). whose owner Andries Wielinga is making the past live again.
What’s a Van Veen?
In the 1970s, Dutch two-wheeled tycoon Hendrik ‘Henk’ Van Veen produced what was then by far the most high-performance – and most expensive – streetbike money could buy. It was powered by a 100bhp twin-rotor engine developed from the engine in the NSU Ro80, the famous rotary-engined car which entered production in 1967. The Van Veen OCR 1000 was symptomatic of the age of excess. Van Veen sold 38 examples to the likes of US magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes and German Opel/Sachs heir Gunther Sachs at a price equivalent to Euro 40,000 today before the company closed down in 1981. Which makes Wielinga’s decision to build ten exact replicas of the late-‘70s production Van Veen OCR Rotary retailing at Euro 85,000 either very brave or a very foolish!
Van Veen imported Kreidler mopeds and minibikes to the Netherlands from Germany during the ‘60s and ‘70s. He was able to go Grand Prix racing in the 50cc category with his own specially developed Van Veen Kreidlers, and to see his riders win four World championships, starting with Jan de Vries in 1971. The same year Van Veen took the first steps towards establishing his own series-production motorcycle brand. He built a 100bhp prototype road bike featuring a 1000cc Mazda Cosmo rotary engine shoehorned into a Moto Guzzi V7 frame. Although the result was challenged aesthetically, its performance was so impressive by the standards of the era – 100bhp was a lot back then – Van Veen decided to put a bike into production using the NSU rotary manufactured by Comotor in Luxembourg.
Design and production
He gave the job of designing it to one of his GP riders, 24-year old Jos Schurgers, who finished third in the 50cc World Championship in 1971. Schurgers created the rotary-engined Van Veen OCR 1000 (standing for Oil-Cooled Rotors) with the help of British designer Simon Saunders, better known today as the proprietor of the Ariel Car Company, builder of the Ariel Ace V4.
The result made its debut at the Cologne Show in October 1974. Its show-stopping impact was such that some leading executives of BMW Motorrad were reportedly fired on the ground that they ought not to have allowed the German manufacturer to be overshadowed in its home market show! The OCR also sidelined the new flat-four Honda Gold Wing by its sheer presence and its cost. At a time that the world was shakily recovering from the 1973 oil embargo crisis, the idea of launching such an expensive, excessive and above all thirsty motorcycle seemed decidedly risky.
But Henk Van Veen pursued his dream, establishing a factory to manufacture the OCR 1000 in his key potential market, West Germany. The OCR 1000 had a remarkable specification for its time, with 100.4bhp at 6,500rpm. The twin-rotor engine displaced 996cc, equivalent to 1,693cc for a conventional four-stroke under the FIM’s 1:1.7 equivalency formula for Wankels. The engine came from Comotor, a joint-venture project between NSU and Citroën, who installed it in their Birotor GS model. An agreement was made to supply the engine in batches of 50 to Van Veen.
In spite of a 292kg dry weight, performance was impressive. 100kph came in just 3.6s, and top speed was 224kph. The 0-200kph time was 16sec. However, complaints about poor throttle response, a flawed gearchange and ineffective brakes – a critical factor on such a fast, heavy bike with minimal engine braking – saw Van Veen delay production while these issues were addressed.
One year later in 1977 production of the Van Veen OCR 1000 got under way. But after just a handful of bikes had been constructed, production of the engine stopped. Comotor folded soon after. Technical problems with the rotor’s tip seals – a recurring problem on early rotary engines – were just part of the problem. Citroën had ceased production of the Birotor after making just 847 examples. NSU ended Ro80 production in 1977 and, owned by VW since 1969, was swallowed into the Audi brand. Van Veen staggered on with production, with the final original OCR 1000 of the 38 built completed in 1981 before everything ground to a halt and the factory closed.
Fast forwards to today…
Now, 40 years later, this Van Veen ultrabike is back in production, thanks partly to Dutch rotary-engine enthusiast Ger Van Rootselaar. He purchased the entire stock of parts from Van Veen when the factory shut. From these, he assembled Van Veen OCR 1000 no. 39 for himself. He had no intention of doing anything more until he met up with Andries Wielinga, based in the nearby north Holland town of Wommels and a restorer of classic Citroën cars including the rare GS Birotor.
“I’ve rebuilt two of these so far, and their technology was very interesting,” says Andries. “I ride bikes on the road, so when Ger Van Rootselaar decided he wanted to sell his Van Veen OCR parts because they were just sitting there gathering dust, he had two people who wanted to buy them, one German and one English. But he realised that if he sold them that would be the end of him ever making any new bikes himself, so he came to see me and we got talking. We agreed that I’d buy the parts from him, and he’d build the engines for me.
“That was in 2009, and that’s how it all started, since when we’ve digitalised the original drawings, and built up a complete parts stock to build ten motorcycles, using in most cases the original suppliers. I’m making the exact same bike from forty years ago, with all the original parts just as Van Veen made them back then. We tracked down every small part supplier, even down to the ones making silly things like the special kind of tie wraps for the cables – it took two months of searching, but we got them specially made! We wanted to make a completely authentic original bike, and even if some of them took half a year to track down, we managed to find all the parts to do so, except for the tubular steel frame, which is made by Nico Bakker to exactly the same design as the original, and of course the tyres, which are Michelin Macadam. Otherwise, this bike is history on wheels – but brand new!”
The born-again Van Veen OCR 1000 isn’t so much a replica as the continuation of production forty years down the line, with mostly original period parts acquired as part of the factory clearout, even down to the Ronal cast aluminium wheels. They were strictly futuristic at a time when everything else in the marketplace had wire wheels. Also avantgarde were the 42mm Van Veen telescopic forks with Koni internals, the twin Koni shocks nitrogen gas shocks with three-way preload adjustment and the trio of 280mm Brembo cast-iron discs with two-piston Brembo calipers, which apparently cured the braking problems experienced with the stainless steel discs originally fitted. It may seem strange now, but all this stuff was extremely leading edge back in the late 70s, and partially justified the bike’s very steep price tag.
The OCR 1000 is time warp motorcycle. It’s only available in one colour, the original classy-looking black-and-green livery. Delivery time is three months from the customer placing an order, and the price includes a two-year unlimited mileage warranty the same as Van Veen offered. Just ten bikes will be built. Four have already found customers, reflecting the number of engines held in stock. The Comotor twin-rotor motor, with wet sump lubrication for the oil-cooled rotors and a water-cooled engine casing is built up by Ger Van Rootselaar. It gets up-rated rotor tip seals, reflecting Mazda’s successful resolution of this single most contentious rotary engine issue.
Riding the Van Veen
The chance to spend an afternoon riding this back-to-the-future bike revealed an enticing blend of old and new that in some ways was rather frustrating. I must admit to be seduced by the Wankel engine’s smooth running, compact build and broadspread of power. Hit the starter button and the twin-rotor engine bursts into life via the twin-choke Solex carb’s automatic cold start setting, before settling to a fast-sounding but totally vibration-free 1,300rpm idle. It’s accompanied by the trademark offbeat rotary burble that’s halfway between a two-stroke’s high-pitched crack and a four-stroke’s deeper rumble – call it a three-stroke!
Having only ever ridden a 588cc twin-rotor Norton Rotary streetbike, I was unprepared for the depths of performance delivered by the Van Veen’s engine. With almost twice the capacity it has practically double the rate of acceleration, in spite of its heavy weight. The OCR pulls smoothly away from literally off idle, with impressive wide open acceleration from 2,000rpm upwards. There’s no risk of lifting the front wheel, thanks to the long 1550mm wheelbase and the fact the heavy motor is carried low in the bike. The Comotor engine motors hard and fast with a totally seamless power delivery toward the 6,500rpm redline – and beyond! There’s no built-in revlimiter on the Bosch/Hardig CDI, and perhaps there should be, because several times I realised I’d been seduced by the smooth-running engine to send the tacho needle beyond the 7,000rpm mark.
There’s 100.4bhp on tap, matched to 13.8mkg of torque at just 3,500rpm. That means this thoroughly modern engine is a delight to use, with waves of grunt just waiting for you each time you change gear to propel the revs back towards the red zone again. The rotary motor has serious reserves of performance which it’s fun to exploit, but without the slightest undue vibration. Thanks to that fabulous motor, this is a very untiring bike to ride hard, in spite of its heavy weight and large capacity. The gearchange is OK by shaftie standards, though there’s a clunk when changing from first to second through neutral. And the hydraulic-operated diaphragm clutch is quite easy and precise to use, if not quite as light-action as I’d expected.
The OCR’s riding stance is very 70s; upright but pretty comfortable until you get much over 140kph, when you start to struggle to hold on. The location of the right footrest is annoying. The clutch housing protrudes into your ankle bone, which means you can’t reach the rear brake pedal properly, and also can’t park your toes on the footrest. And without much engine braking to speak of on the twin-rotor motor, you do have to use both front and rear brakes very hard to stop. Really, the brakes fitted to the OCR aren’t up to arresting the significant performance of such a fast, heavy bike.
Konis were the hot tip in the twin-shock era, but the rear suspension feels oversprung, probably in order to counter all that torque and the weight transfer under hard acceleration. The relatively primitive Van Veen forks with Koni internals and zero damping adjustment feel very stiff and not very compliant. They don’t like bumps much, through the hefty weight of the bike as a whole helps settle any chatter before it gets out of hand. But you can’t really feel what the front Michelin tyre is doing, and this is pretty important with a Euro 85,000 package you need to bring home in one piece, especially with the skinny 18-inch tyres and all that weight.
I can’t help thinking Andries Wiesinga has missed an opportunity here. Nowadays, a bike like this with such a fabulous high-performance engine deserves much better suspension and brakes to allow you to exploit that performance in safety, and he should fit modern Öhlins forks and Brembo radial brakes to the OCR 1000 to let his customers do so. Instead, you must exploit the thoroughly modern performance of that crown jewel of an engine via period handling hardware that’s not up to scratch, and that’s a pity. Reproducing the bike in original guise is one thing, but to include all the period drawbacks when they’re easily resolvable is a mistake. My test confirmed that the OCR was way ahead of its time in terms of concept, and performance, but the old-school brakes and suspension stop you enjoying the fruits of that.
Maybe Andries Wielinga will listen, and get the message….. Log on to www.ocrmotors.com to find out!
Photos: Kyoichi Nakamura
