KIEFLER | 1907-12 | USA :
The Kiefler is one of the lesser-known names from the remarkably crowded first decade of American motorcycle manufacturing, a period when dozens of small builders were producing machines in workshops across the country. Kiefler Motor Works was located at 184-13 Broadway, Buffalo, New York, and made only a single-cylinder type.
A contemporary description from the American Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal provides the clearest picture of what the Kiefler was. The motor was rated at 5 horsepower and was of the slow-speed type. The cooling flanges were cut from the solid, making it possible to secure very thin and deep flanges. The intake valve was automatic and mounted directly over the exhaust valve. Lubrication was automatic through a sight-feed cup. Gasoline and oil were carried in a double-compartment torpedo tank mounted between the truss tubes, holding one and a half gallons of gasoline and three pints of oil. The wheelbase was 53 inches, with 28 by 2.5 inch tyres fitted. A two-speed gear gave a ratio of 4 to 1 on high speed and 9 to 1 on low. The motor could be started with a crank, and the clutch was operated by a lever on top of the gasoline tank.
The Kiefler was not merely a paper entry in the trade directories. At the 1909 Federation of American Motorcyclists endurance contest, H.J. Kiefler riding a Kiefler entered alongside machines from Curtiss, Emblem, Excelsior, Harley-Davidson, Indian, Marvel, Merkel, NSU, Pierce, Thor, Yale and others. Kiefler won a gold medal with a score of 936 points. The FAM endurance contest was the most demanding reliability event in the American motorcycle calendar of the period, covering hundreds of miles with observed test hills and speed regulations, and a gold medal result placed the Kiefler among the credible machines of its day. That a single Kiefler appeared among nineteen marques at the 1909 event, with its builder riding it himself, suggests a small but committed operation.
The Kiefler Motor Works operated from early 1907 to approximately 1912. It was a contemporary of scores of similar single-cylinder American machines that flourished briefly in the years before the consolidation of the industry around Harley-Davidson, Indian and Excelsior reduced the market available to smaller builders. The Kiefler’s gold medal performance in 1909 stands as the single documented competitive achievement of a marque that left little else in the historical record.
