Lehaitre
The Lehaitre (1938) is considered one of the most unusual motorcycles in the world. The inventor J. LeHaître (also J. Le Haître) presented a chain motorcycle in Paris in 1938 , whose air-cooled 500 cm³ four-stroke engine helped the 414 kg chain motorcycle to a top speed of 30 km / h. The rubber chain ran over five rollers, the front one should have allowed a slight shift of the chain and thus a steering movement. The Lehaitre was considered "no wonder of maneuverability". In a prototype, the change in direction was made using two support wheels. The Lehaitre could already be seen in the run-up to the Second World War in a possible war effort.
Various manufacturers were more or less concerned with chain drives for motorcycles at this time. Mercier (1936–1939) in France had designed various versions with articulated steering ; BMW in Germany tried a snow wheel with a sidecar (1936); However, only the Kettenkrad from NSU was successful .
literature
- François-Marie Dumas: Unusual Motorcycles . Haynes 2012, ISBN 978-0-85733-261-5 .
Web links
- Lehaitre (1938) ( Memento from May 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Prototype with training wheels
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c François-Marie Dumas: Unusual Motorcycles ., Pp. 95–97.
- ↑ Lehaitre (accessed May 4, 2014)
- ↑ Lehaitre with machine gun Cover picture of the magazine Modern Mechanix from February 1938 (accessed on May 5, 2014)
- ↑ yesterdays.nl ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Mercier (accessed May 4, 2014)
- ↑ BMW snow bike with sidecar (accessed on May 4, 2014)
