Motorcycle specifications Skura MSS1 1949 Manu militari recycling

Since the dawn of mankind, man has always been exceptionally ingenious at smashing other people's faces in. Weapons and other means of mass murder have always been man's niche, but some people also use the remnants of these same weapons to create more interesting contraptions. A certain Stanislaw Skura did just that, building a motorcycle from military scrap.

Thus was born the MSS1. Not quite a motorcycle, but a sidecar. Enormous, capable of accommodating 8 people: three on the wheel, two in the basket and three more on a special platform at the rear. Given the size of the machine, these passengers must not have been too cramped.

Nowadays, some manufacturers go too far with 2-liter engines, even 2.5 liters on the Rocket III. Skura didn't ask such questions. Apparently, he took a V12 block from the Messerschmitt ME 109 and turned it into a colossal 4,500 cm3 V2. Talk about torque! It was mated to a 3-speed gearbox.

To create his bike, Stanislaw assembled parts from whatever he could get his hands on. The cylinders came from generators; the carburetors were from a tank; the tires came from airplane landing gear mounted on truck rims; and the designer worked on a lot of aluminum parts.

It's after that that things start to go wrong. Skura was reluctant to give it away without being able to put it in his name. On the official side, they didn't like it, ordered the destruction of the machine.... and the inventor cut them off by pulverizing it in front of them with a hammer.

A little later, Stanislaw Skura salvaged some parts to build another, less extreme motorcycle. His MSS500 was also based on an aluminum frame, but powered by a more reasonable 500 cm3 (roughly) single-cylinder engine. This one had a better fate, as it still exists today.

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