KMS | 1922-24 | Germany :
The KMS was a Stuttgart motorcycle produced by Kunz & Müller Motorradwerk of Militärstrasse 88b in the Württemberg capital, operating from 1922 to 1924. The firm offered a range that covered the spectrum from simple auxiliary-engined lightweight to a more ambitious machine of its own engineering.
The most technically distinctive model in the range was a 196cc OHV single with inclined valves, using an engine of the firm’s own design. Among the many small German producers of the early 1920s, building one’s own overhead-valve engine at this capacity was a meaningful engineering commitment. The inclined valve arrangement was a specific configuration that placed the valves at an angle from the cylinder axis to achieve better breathing and combustion characteristics than a simple vertical disposition allowed, and its adoption in an in-house design indicates that Kunz & Müller were pursuing performance rather than economy as the primary objective of at least one model.
The second model used a 142cc Grade two-stroke engine. Hans Grade founded Grade-Motoren-Werke-GmbH in Magdeburg in 1905. He built cars, motorcycles and aeroplanes. The motorcycles used 118cc and 132cc two-stroke engines built in the Grade factory. Grade engines in their various small capacities were used by several German assemblers of the period as a practical source for the entry-level market. The 142cc Grade fitted to the KMS placed it alongside machines from other Stuttgart-area producers who chose similar lightweight power units, including the Stolco of Stollstein & Co. on Ostendstrasse who fitted Grade 148cc engines to their own lightweights in the same years.
The third offering was a Kraftrad model with a 2.5 PS DKW engine. DKW entered the two-wheeled field in 1921 with a 118cc two-stroke auxiliary engine that could be installed on a bicycle, and built its first complete motorcycle, the 142cc Reichsfahrmodell, in 1922. The timing proved fortuitous as the company was able to ride the wave of newfound popularity for inexpensive two-wheeled transportation following Germany’s bout with extreme inflation in the early 1920s. For a small Stuttgart producer, fitting the DKW engine gave access to the reliability and parts supply of the most commercially successful lightweight two-stroke manufacturer in Germany.
The three-model range of the KMS therefore addressed distinct parts of the market: the OHV single for the buyer seeking a capable four-stroke; the Grade-engined machine for the most price-sensitive customer; and the DKW-powered Kraftrad occupying the middle ground. That such a small producer chose to develop its own overhead-valve engine at all, rather than sourcing everything from established suppliers, suggests ambition beyond simple assembly. The years 1922 to 1924 proved too short for that ambition to reach its commercial potential. Stuttgart and the surrounding Württemberg region would produce numerous motorcycle makers in these years, almost all of them ending production before the decade was out as the German market consolidated around the survivors with the scale to compete on price.
