Berliner Motor Corporation
| Private | |
| Fate | Defunct |
| Founded | New York, NY USA 1951 |
| Founder | Brothers Joseph and Michael Berliner |
| Defunct | Circa 1984 |
| Headquarters | Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey |
|
Area served
|
North America |
|
Key people
|
President Joseph Berliner, Vice President or Sales Manager Michael Berliner, Director of Public Relations Walter von SchonfeldBob Blair Calif. Norton dealer and racing representative, Reno Leoni race bike builder sent by Ducati |
| Products | Motorcycles |
| Services | Import, distribution, and retail sale of European motorcycles in the USA |
| Divisions | Premier Motor Corportation (Moto Guzzi), International Motorcycle Co. (Sachs and Zündapp), J-Be, J. B. Matchless Corporation (Matchless) |
Berliner Motor Corporation was the US distributor from the 1950s through the 1980s for several European motorcycle marques, including Ducati, J-Be,Matchless, Moto Guzzi, Norton, Sachs and Zündapp, as well as selling Metzeler tires. Berliner Motor was highly influential as the voice of the huge American market to the motorcycle companies they bought bikes from, and their suggestions, and sometimes forceful demands, guided many decisions in Europe as to which bikes to develop, produce, or discontinue.
Joseph Berliner founded his motorcycle business in New York City distributing and repairing Zündapp motorcycles east of the Mississippi in 1951, using contacts with that German manufacturer he had developed before World War II. He was a Hungarian Jewish refugee from the Holocaust who had spent time in Hungarian slave labor camps, and had lost 16 close family members on arrival at Auschwitz. Michael Berliner, the youngest of 5 brothers, was saved only because Joseph, and another Berliner brother, both of whom the SS intended to exploit for their skill as mechanics, convinced them that young Michael, too, was a mechanic. The Berliner brothers survived by maintaining a fleet of German army trucks. One brother would die of hunger and typhus, leaving only Joseph, Michael, and two other siblings alive after the war.
Prior to the Holocaust, Joseph Berliner worked in his father's radio-bicycle-motorcycle shop, and had received schooling in mechanics and business. After the war he assisted in Jewish relief in Frankfurt, Germany, and was able to find his wife who had been liberated by the Swedish Red Cross. As the sons of a Hungarian anti-Communist World War I war hero, the brothers feared returning to their Soviet-controlled homeland, and so emigrated to the US.
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Wikipedia