Hercules?

Anybody ever seen one of these?

I sure haven't.

Bet it revs to high hell.

Not mine, no affiliation, etc.

I've seen them, but not for many a year.

They don't rev as high as you think, and the piston engines rev higher than you're likely giving them credit for.

There was one at the local Eurobrit car show last year. Cool bike.

What would concern me is that the ad sounds like he hasn't got the bike running. Spares for these aren't exactly that easy to find as not many were made and Hercules has been out of business for a while. This bike and the Van Veen were the first two production bikes to use a rotary engine and both are pretty rare. It's also a bit of an oddity in Hercules' line up as they were mostly making small capacity bikes.

And just for history lesson's sake, the other two rotary production bikes were the Suzuki RE-5 (which IIRC is the most common one) and the Norton Rotary. The latter was pretty much UK-only, although they exported a few. I'm still kicking myself that I missed out on a civvy Norton while I lived in the UK as most of the ones you find are ex-police and don't have a passenger seat.

I love old bikes, but you can get a new Street Triple for $8k. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a Hyabusa or ZX-14 with tuning and exhaust makes about as much whp as the average RX-8.

Know a guy locally that has a couple of them. The same guy that 93EXCivic is refering to. He also has a couple water buffalos (water cooled Suzuki 750) and a couple other bikes. He collects old motorcycles.

The last issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine had an article on the Hercules rotary, you may be able to find a copy on your local newsstand.

edit: not a motorcycle, but another rotary oddity from that time era was the Arctic Cat 303 snowmobile. They were pretty slow.

rotard wrote: I love old bikes, but you can get a new Street Triple for $8k. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a Hyabusa or ZX-14 with tuning and exhaust makes about as much whp as the average RX-8.

But isn't that like saying you can get a couple of Pagani Zondas for the the price of an original Cobra?

That bike has all the panache of a CB350 with a dishwasher motor strapped to the bottom. It's neat in concept but it looks like poop and probably rides even worse.

"He never sold it so it sat in his living room"

And it got 2,200 miles on it how? If Mazda can't make a rotary last, I have about zero faith in "Hercules."

This would be cool sitting on a display in the basement of an MSF museum.

PHeller wrote:

I have never wanted anything more than one of those. Bee Dee Bee Dee Bee

stuart in mn wrote: The last issue of Motorcycle Classics magazine had an article on the Hercules rotary, you may be able to find a copy on your local newsstand.

And if I remember parts are available from a well known source (whose name i cannot remember).

In reply to dculberson:

Hercules was actually one of the big(ger) motorcycle manufacturers in Germany. We're not talking two blokes in a shed here.

In reply to BoxheadTim:

Are you saying that Hercules=Original Cobra?

In reply to rotard:

No, but I attempted to say that you might be trying to compare Apples with Oranges . Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised if the W2000s are only slightly less rare than Cobras. Doesn't make them extremely valuable, though.

BoxheadTim wrote: In reply to dculberson: Hercules was actually one of the big(ger) motorcycle manufacturers in Germany. We're not talking two blokes in a shed here.

I think that could be considered "damning with faint praise." ;-)

Something like that . They produced a lot of the small motorcycles that you could ride in Germany when you turned 16 (you need(ed) to be 18 to get a car license in Germany) but the insurance rates for the 50cc models went through the roof as they were a little crash prone.

This is an example of what paid the bills for them:

According to the German Wikipedia article they made about 1800 W2000s so they are a little less rare than I thought.