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Mammoth auction
Rare Münch
Mammut 2000 up for sale
November 18, 2025 – Guy 'Guido'
Allen
Bring a Trailer in the USA has recently had a Münch Mammut 2000 up for auction – a very rare piece of machinery. It failed to sell, with a very modest top bid of Au$36,500 (US$23,750, GB£18,000, €20,500).
Those of you who have been around a while may well have
heard of Friedel Münch. He made an international name for
himself back in the 1960s and through the 1970s building
big fast motorcycles powered by NSU car engines, starting
at 998cc and working up to 1177. That's him at work,
above.
Dubbed Mammut (Mammoth), they were expensive and exclusive. Back in 1969, the quoted price was 2.5 times that of a BMW R69S.
Münch had another crack at the theme in 1987, releasing a
new range under the Horex brand, which he had owned for
some decades, culminating in the Titan 2000 (above). There
was a brief lineage of machines, starting at 1400cc and
working up to 2000cc.
By 1997 the Mammut name had been acquired by engineer
Thomas Petsch, who teamed up with Münch to produce a new
generation of machine.
It was launched in year 2000 and the specs were
impressive. At the heart was a 1998cc inline four derived
from an Opel EcoTec, designed by Saab.
The head was a 16-valve unit and Lotus was said to have
been involved in the development. Fuel and engine
management was handled by a closed-loop Motec system with
a catalytic converter.
It ran a Schwitzer turbocharger, giving the machine a claimed 260 horses. That power figure arrived by 5650rpm, though the engine was said to be safe to 8500rpm. The torque claim was 295Nm (217ft-lb) at a lazy 3500rpm.
Top speed was limited to 250km/h (156mph) to avoid too much scrutiny from legislators. The factory listed the unrestricted top speed as 277km/h (172mph).
It was running a six-speed manual transmission and an
enclosed chain drive.
Holding it together was a fairly conventional twin-loop
steel frame.
Suspension was a set of 43mm Ohlins USD forks up front, with twin underslung WP Racing shocks on the rear.
Braking was by a trio of eight-piston calipers, while weight was pegged at 354kg (780lb) and fuel capacity listed at 26.5lt (7.0gal US, 5.8gal UK).
Back when it was released in year 2000, the price was a
hefty Au$126,000 (US$82,000, GB£62,000, €71,000).
Münch was born in 1927 and died in 2014.
There is a
display dedicated to his work at the Speyer Technik
museum in Germany.
See the review of a 1970 Münch Mammut, from The Vintagent
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