Suzuki won its first world title with an East German defector and his factory’s secrets.
Ernst Degner was on his way to the 1961 125cc world title for East Germany’s MZ, on two-strokes designed by a wartime missile engineer. Secretly signed to Suzuki, he fled west after a race in Sweden, and his drugged wife and children followed in a car’s hidden trunk. In 1962 he won Suzuki its first world title.
Suzuki on Brandseum