Franz Langer is a German engineer with a soft spot for single cylinder engines. You would think that his garage is filled with heavy vibrating 600 or 700cc motorcycles and this is exactly how it used to be until Franz retired and started building the most outrageous single cylinder motorcycles, just for the hell of it.

Of course, V-Twins were the alternative, but the possibilities are greater in that case and our engineer loves tough challenges so he had its name written in the Guinness book of records for building the biggest single cylinder motor on a motorcycle. The goal until that time was 1000cc and that was also the German’s record for that time.

But things weren’t about to stay that way for long as a 1500cc single soon requested its rights and got registered in the World Book of Records.

Franz considered it a challenge and so it modified an old NSU Konsul and adapted an airplane engine to it. Engine type? Single cylinder, of course! The problem was that even this one only displaced 1440ccs, which got close to the record holder, but didn’t beat it. The solution was to enlarge the airplane engine and fit a bigger and yet lighter piston.

You would have to be a really adventurous kind of guy in order to ride this thing, but if a retired engineer can do it, I bet every motorcyclist can. The thing is that you have to kick start it and that’s worst than a nightmare considering the cylinder capacity of the single cylinder engine.