OLD airhead

[r50us68]

I knew that BMW (contracted for Douglas) error Max Fritz designed the R32 using BMW M2B15 engine that was developed in 1920. to start, and that there were other boxer's out there.
This is nice.
Thanks for sending me to search out the truth
http://southsiders-mc.blogspot.com/2011/04/barthelemy-speciale.html

[ozmoses]

That's a great history lesson, thanks!

Bike looks exactly like what it is: machine.

[caponerd]

Where did you get the idea that BMW ever contracted for Douglas? (the guy who created that blog doesn't make this claim)

Douglas always built their own engines.

They were building horizontally opposed engines long before BMW ever did. I think the first one was in 1911. After "The Great War", some Douglas engines were built under license by Bosch, but BMW never had a relationship with Douglas.

This is all pretty well-documented history.
The first BMW horizontally opposed motorcycle engines were created simply because BMW was banned by the Versailles Treaty from building aircraft engines. It was likely a copy of the either the Douglas engine or the ABC horizontally opposed engine, which is another very old English design.

The first BMW motorcycle engine was installed in the Helios motorcyce (most here are probably aware of this), which was really built by BMW, and even had the "roundel" on the gas tank.

If you're looking for non-BMW horizontally opposed twins, there were many. The ABC and Gnome et Rhone mentioned in the blog are two of them. There was also Condor, made in Switzerland, Zundapp and Hoffman of Germany, Marusho/Lilac of Japan, and of course, the Russian and Chinese versions. In addition, Granville Bradshaw, mentioned in that blog as the designer of the ABC engine, also sold a few HO engines to various very small production English companies.
You could also google Aristos, Menos and Sterna. The same German motorcycle sold under different names during the 1920's, which used a water cooled 600cc HO engine.
There were a lot of them out there in the early years of the motorcycle industry.

ok, here ya go. Don't know if any still exist.

[danedg]

That's good stuff right there....