The arguably rare, at least to Western eyes, Hungarian Pannonia 250 had been perfectly matched to Duna “bullet nose” sidecar when found by its owner, an admitted “professional computer geek whilst at the 2009 Daytona Bike Week where she ambled into the motorcycle auction to find a bike suitable for AHRMA bike racing.
“Unfortunately that particular race bike came up to auction at the end of the day, and by the time I left, I owned three new motorcycles including the Pannonia. This bike picked me. I walked past it and it just jumped out at me and before I knew I was bidding on it and took it home.”
As it’s her first sidecar, she says there is a learning curve, but is acclimating fairly quickly from two to sidecar rig’s three wheels as she is an experience rider and active in ARHMA racing and owes several other vintage bikes.
She says, “I have not gone on the freeway as yet. Also, I need a manual to figure out the maintenance, but I can’t read Hungarian. People seem to like it as much as me. I’ve already been approached for its use in a movie, so I guess it’s photogenic.”
The Pannonia sidecar combo does make an indelible impression, its stellar paint scheme certainly a major factor along with its top class restoration, the work
accomplished by Blue Moon Cycle located in Norcross, GA.
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Yes, the names does seem too close to pandemonium, yet there had to be something that made sense to produce a rather solid, well finished motorcycle during in the final years of Stalin’s psychopathic grip on Eastern Europe, Hungary suffering behind the Iron Curtain, now since torn down.
The two-stroke singles and “twingle” twins that would bear the name Pannonia were first produced in Budapest in 1954, although the bike’s ancestral roots extend back to 1923, the motorcycles originally branded as Csepel and produced at the company’s giant steel mills of Csepel on the island of Danubia. Csepel reportedly produced over a million motorcycles of various types and displacements over the several decades, some 300,000 exported to the Soviet Union as reliable workhorses, their success based in great part on the fact that they actually started in the freezing temperatures of Siberia thanks to an efficient magneto ignition. In addition, the Pannonia offered a degree of creature comfort thanks to its incorporation of the then newest technologies including telescope front forks and swingarm equipped chassis.
The early Pannonia model were derived from the Csepel 250 single-cylinder while models produced during the 1950s included a 125 cc, a 250 cc, and a 350 cc. prototype with final shaft drive. All these bikes were realized during the ’50s. off-road and endure versions appeared, the singles producing between 14 and 20 HP. When the Csepel company stopped producing the machine, the Danuvia Company took over, Danuvia previously a small arms factory. The motorcycle was then called the Danuvia. They were also marketed as White Motorcycles (Super Sport 250) in the United States in the mid-1960s. Apparently they were still available in 1975, examples recently re-exported back to Hungary in Sept. 2010 where they are rare and much valued. At one point, the Csepel at sought investment interest from Yamaha which didn’t materialize.
The Hungarian built Duna sidecar with its distinctive “jet engine” design. Its aluminum construction contributed to its light weight, well-suited for being
pulled by the smaller displacement vehicles of the 1950-60s in Eastern Europe.
Here Wendy’s racing buddies Ralph Hudson and Thad Wolf take Wendy for a spin. Thad races an experimental electric motorcycle, the Norton Electra and Ralph
owns three 200 MPH+ Bonneville records.
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Postscript to the Pannonia
It was reported that a small Hungarian investment group of Pannonia enthusiasts were in the process of reviving the brand, the process beginning in 2002, a model proposed for introduction in 2007 after a prototype was built and awaiting Hungarian government approval. The new model was named Bol d’Or, but no
Today, the Pannonia is much valued and sought after in the Baltic countries, for
