Much reduced in circumstances - posh talk for flat broke - I find myself looking at MZs. My 'round the world Transalp was stolen a while back unfortunately.

I have just got a MZ ETZ 125 for about town and am impressed. Not without its faults, but for strength economy and simplicity it is brilliant. Good front brake too. But a bit small for touring in Europe (the lightweight GF might manage though).

So I am thinking about upgrading to a 250 ETZ and making it my do-everything bike. Performance and looks have never been important to me (nor to my girlfriend, ho ho). I like the characterfulness of it. That's the biker shorthand for ugly brute loads of trouble yes? There's something cheerfully curmudgeonly about old MZs. You can put on the cheapest nastiest tatty luggage and it will fit right in. No wallet-withering touratech nonsense. Everything fabricated from old tin cans, emergency roadside engine rebuild with a hammer and spanner in less than an hour, that sort of thing. And boy are they cheap.

That's a disservice really. The most impressive aspects of the 125 is the engineering. They are designed to take knocks, keep going, run on low grade fluids, handle bad roads, be cheap to run, be easily serviceable and go speeds that people need. Realworld use, to fall back on a Bike mag cliche. That's a triumph.

It's exactly the absence of crappy overdesigned plastic that makes them attractive to me. The side faring is metal and lockable. How neat is that? The DDR must have been using a different dictionary to the west. Design was defined by utility, not fancy looks. This made for some miserable architecture - all that brutal concrete, whew - but in vehicles it is kind of refreshing. Being a 40-something male I am sick and tired of the useless designer crap that intrudes into my life. The MZ ETZ is the town-centre car park of bikes.

I am happy to put some work in to get it in shape; in fact, it's the best way to get to know the machine. It's about time I learnt how to overhaul a top end. Planning to slow tour Europe on this (funny how slow in this part of the world means faster than most people have been in their lives). Looking around the net I see they can make motorway/autoroute speeds - although not for all day - and those east Europeans having been greenlaning on them for years. So: they're versatile.

GSers weep.

Dissuasion. Am I in need of some?

Simon

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Simon Kennedy
Around the world 2000-2004, on a 1993 Honda Transalp