Junak was a Polish bike company formed in 1952. After two years of struggle by the founders to build the bikes, mostly due to the Soviet-occupied nation’s lack of proper machinery, they launched and found success. The one and two-cylinder bikes were manufactured until 1965 and 90,000 were produced. The Polish company exported them to Socialist and Communist states such as Bulgaria, Cuba, Mongolia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Libya and of course, Hungary.
This brings us to Szakal’s shop, Art Deco Motorcycling in Budapest. I’ve tried to find their website and contact information but have had no luck. The information I’m giving you is from a Google translation of an article written in Hungarian. Here is a sample:
The heart is chosen to be blind love and happiness are not debates – glad that it was not prepared for the chopper machine, but something much more stylish. A cafe racer.
Looks like poetry. Excellent. Check out the first bike built by Szakal and his son; a tasty 350cc thumper, cafe racer style:
pannonia single cafe racer – right | art deco motorcycling
How clean can you get? Hide the wires? Then it wouldn’t look like it works.
pannonia single cafe racer – left | art deco motorcycling
Next we have something completely different but just as clean. If I understand my Hungarian-to-English mistranslations, it’s a 500cc Junak Pannonia P10 250cc two-stroke twin and goodness, it’s freaking great:
pannonia p10 250cc two-stroke board tracker | art deco motorcycling
Black and copper. Hand-tooled leather seat. Dig the jockey shift:
pannonia 250cc twin board tracker | art deco motorcycling
Here is more from the Hungarian-to-English Google translation:
The manual gearbox, suicide for lovers, as it fits.
I couldn’t help it. We know the best poets are always Hungary.
One last shot, folks. If anybody knows anything more about Art Deco Motor-cycling, the builder named Szakal or anything about his bikes, please comment below and let everyone know!
pannonia p10 inline twin board tracker – left rear | art deco motorcycling
UPDATE:
Wednesday 12.09.09:
Hey folks, one of our readers, Duncan Moore, knows a bit about these bikes and the builder. Check out Duncan’s website here and click the “COMMENTS” link below to view the website of Art Deco Motorcycling.
Get the best of bikerMetric directly in your inbox, once a week, every week.