OLD BIKE AUSTRALASIA: 45Veen Kreidlers, and see his riders win four World
championships; the first in 1971. But, that very same
year, Van Veen had taken the first steps towards
establishing his own series-production motorcycle
brand. He did so by creating a 100bhp prototype road
bike featuring a 1000cc Mazda Cosmo rotary engine
shoehorned into a Moto Guzzi V7 frame, still with
shaft final drive, and although the result was
significantly challenged aesthetically, its performance
was so impressive by the standards of the era –
100bhp was a lot back then, Van Veen decided to put
such a bike into production using the NSU engine
manufactured by Comotor in Luxembourg.
To do so, he gave the job of designing it to one of
his GP riders, 24-year old Jos Schurgers, who created
the rotary-engined Van Veen OCR 1000 (standing for
Oil-Cooled Rotors) with the help of British designer
Simon Saunders. The result duly made its debut at
the Cologne Show in October 1974, where its impact
was almost show-stopping. Schurgers’ ground-
breaking styling was later widely copied by other
manufacturers. At a time that the world was shakily
recovering from the 1973 oil embargo crisis, when
the quadrupling of petrol prices had put an end to
decades of cheap fuel, the idea of launching such an
expensive, excessive and above all thirsty motorcycle
(high fuel consumption and dirty emissions have
traditionally been the achilles heel of Wankel
engines) seemed decidedly risky.
But Henk Van Veen pursued his dream, establishing
a factory at Duderstadt to manufacture the OCR 1000
in his key potential market for such a bike, West
Germany. In 1976 a select few journalists visited it to
ride the pre-production version of the bike. This had
a remarkable specification for its time, with 100.4bhp
delivered at 6,500rpm by the twin-rotor engine meas-
uring 996cc in terms of the swept volume of the
trochoidal rotor chambers, amounting to the equiva-
lent of 1,693cc under the FIM’s 1:1.7 equivalency
formula. Sourced from Comotor, this was essentially
a joint-venture project between rotary pioneers NSU
and traditional avantgarde thinkers Citroën, who
installed it in their Birotor GS model – but an agree-
ment was made to also supply the engine in batches
of 50 to Van Veen. In spite of a 292kg dry weight,
performance was impressive, with a 0-100km/h
acceleration in just 3.6s, and a top speed of 224km/h.
The 0-200kph time was 16sec – impressive for a
sports tourer, which is what the OCR 1000 essentially
was, especially when fitted with the optional very
protective fairing designed by Schurgers. However,
complaints from outside testers about poor throttle
response, a flawed gearchange, and ineffective brakes- a critical factor on such a fast, heavy bike with mini-
mal engine braking – saw Van Veen forced to delay
production while these issues were addressed.
One year later in 1977 production of the Van Veen
OCR 1000 got under way – although the target of
producing 2,000 bikes annually always seemed
hopelessly optimistic, even without the problems of
engine supply which would shortly hit the project. For,
after just a handful of bikes had been constructed and
delivered to eager, well-heeled customers, using the
first batch of 50 motors supplied from Luxembourg,
production of the engine stopped, and Comotor folded
soon after. There had been technical problems with
the rotor’s tip seals – a recurring problem on early
rotary engines, even for Mazda which eventually
resolved the issue – plus the now Peugeot-owned
Citroën had ceased production of the poorly-received
Birotor after making just 847 examples. NSU was now
part of the VW empire, and in 1977 made the last of
the 37,204 Ro80 cars. 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.
But now, this Van Veen ultrabike is back in
production, thanks partly to Dutch rotary-engine
enthusiast Ger Van Rootselaar, who purchased the
entire stock of unassembled parts from Van Veen
when the factory shut. From these, he assembled
Van Veen OCR 1000 no. 39 for himself, but 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➢Hendrik Van Veen
at age 75 with his
own OCR.LEFT The OCR muffler emits
a totally unique burble.
RIGHT Bosch-Hardig CDI
provides the sparks.
BELOW LEFT Very ‘seventies
instrument panel.