series-production streetbike money could buy,
powered by the same 100bhp twin-rotor engine
equipping the NSU Ro80, the world’s first production
rotary-engined car which entered production in 1967.
The Van Veen OCR 1000, of which he sold 38
examples at a retail price equivalent to Euro 40,000
today (twice the price back then of a BMW R100RS, or
half the cost of a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow
limousine!) before the company closed down in 1981,
was in every way symptomatic of the age of excess –
which makes Wielinga’s decision to build ten exact
replicas of the late-‘70s production Van Veen OCR
Rotary retailing at Euro 85,000 tax free, either a very
brave or a very foolish decision, depending on which
way you look at it!
Van Veen’s eponymous company imported Kreidler
50cc mopeds and minibikes to the Netherlands from
Germany in such volume during the ‘60s and ‘70s –
Dutch sales of Kreidlers passed the 100,000 mark in
1971 – that he was able to go Grand Prix racing in the
50cc category with his own specially developed Van44 :OLD BIKE AUSTRALASIA
VAN VEEN
TOP Original Van Veen technical drawings.
ABOVE The prototype OCR 1000
on display at the 1974
Cologne Show.