During the 50's, in europe, maico
had a reputation for building fast and sporty bikes,
rare and expensive but something to dream about. The
bikes where two-stroke road bikes pretty
conventional in design and lightweight. They where
easily converted to off-road use. Models like 250
Blizzard, M175 and 250 MD where common. Most of
these models had the same frame base with the frame
tubes forming a loop on each side of the rear wheel.
That frame design where kept until 1962.
In 1962 the bike had a
conventional hydraulic fork and started to look as a
more modern bike. The development continued throught
the 60's and the bikes reminded a lot of old Greeves.
From the early 70's the maico bikes where famous for
their look. The square metal tank. Thick seats and
modern motocross appearance with longer suspension
travel than most, yellow color and cylinders with
huge cooling fins. The swedish rider Åke Johnson was
a common sight around the GP tracks. From 1973 the
engines got a familiar design and in 1974 the
cylinders got their famous radial fins so common up
until 1983/84. On of the most wanted bikes for
collectors today are the 1974 model. The suspension
had very long travel compared to bikes of the past
and the 400 models had power to match anything on
the track. In 1976 the suspension travel had been
raised even further with rear shocks leaning
forwards. The fact is that the suspension travel
race in the late 70's was much led by maico. One can
even reffer to the entire thing as the other bikes
following maico. Another maico invention was to
mount the front wheel axle in front of the lower
fork leg. This allowed longer travel and a more
rigid internal structure with more overlap. This
invention characerized maico forks throughout the
entire 70's and was soon to be copied by everyone
else. The 77 bikes was much the same but looked
different. The red color combined with modern
plastic side panes gave them a modern look. In 78-79
the bikes had the red color scheme, modern plastic,
38mm forks and leaning shocks with long travel. The
modern engine and a rounded painted tank in metal.
So came 1980! The 1980 model was a
completely redesign of practically everything except
most engine parts and some wheel components. The new
plastic tank came that stayed until 1984. The brand
new 42mm air assisted forks that by many are
regarded as the best as conventional forks that
there is, came with a stunning 12.2 inches (310mm)
of travel. Chromolly double loop frame with a square
box backbone structure. The most significant thing
though was the geometry. The bike had razor sharp
steering, neutral handling and was so easy to ride
that a common joke was "riding a maico is close to
cheating". The thing is that maico got the
measurements between footpegs, handlebar and seat
pretty correct. The weight distribution was also
spot on. The 440cc engine suffered by beeing one and
a half horse down by the new Yamaha YZ465 though.
Unacceptable.
1981 Maico 490, say it !, say it
again, it only makes you happier. Maico had the
easiest job in he world, they had all the tools and
knowhow to build the best open classer in the world.
All they had to do was to pinpoint a few details
that had to be bettered an do so. They bored out the
440cc to a full 490cc. They reconstructed the seat
tank layout to a more flat design. They changed the
wheel spokes pattern. The maico 490 from 1981 is
regarded as the best open class bike ever made. The
combination of useful powerband, suspension and
balance had indeed been hard to beat. Business was
good, maico earned good money. In 1981 the maico 490
sold more open class bikes than, for example Honda
did in their entire motocross line in the US. The
only bike that would outaccelerate the mighty 490
was the awesome KTM 495.
In 1982 maico released their first
generation single shock rear suspension. The rising
rate wasn't entirely correct or to be precise much
to high. The construction also added some weight to
the bike. Combining this the bike was changed for
the worse. Regardless, a correctly dialed in maico
was still the fastest open classer around the track.
In 1983 maico released an entirely
new engine and reworked the frame and plastic too.
The new engine got rid of the chain primary drive
and was extremely small. The single shock linkage
was reworked and performed much better. Maybe the
250cc engine gained the most and was suddenly right
in the pack regarding power output. The 490 was
better again but hardly as good as the -81 model. I
for myself had a Spider 250 and that bike was what I
consider to be the best motocross bike I ever had.
Not a thing broke ever. Always a first starter and a
suspension (Ohlins) that soaked up everything,
Frankly the best suspension I have ever felt.
Despite tests in magazines I tried to drag race all
water cooled japanese machinery and beat them all.
It was so obvious that the maico had a better and
considerably longer powerband allowing it to pull
away half a bike length or so at each gear. The
maico line started to get into trouble. The 1982
models didn't sell good and the 1983 was an
extremely important year and a kind of a second
chance to come back. Unfortunately the 1983 models
faced real trouble with quality problems. wheel hubs
exploded and all kinds of things happened. Strange
enough other bikes like mine never had any problems
what so ever. The market was overwhelmed by the
japanese bikes that proved to have good quality,
performance and also technically better with
water-cooling, disk brakes, aluminium swingarms and
good single shock systems. The maico suffered from
beeing air cooled, a steel swingarm and not so
futuristic plastic combined with old brakes. The
cooling system didn't have any impact on the power
output but the buyers turned their backs on it as
outdated.