Joe Ehrlich – A true original
Love him or loathe him (and there were plenty in both camps), Dr Josef Ehrlich was a true original.
Volatile but inventive, constantly coming up with new ideas and innovative designs right up until his death in September 2003 at the age of 88, the sprightly, dapper engineer universally known as ‘Dr Joe’ was involved with motorcycles all his life. It all began in the early 1930s when, in between earning his doctorate in mechanical engineering in Austria, he competed in sand track and road races on a 250 Puch two-stroke and 500 ohv Sunbeam.
Like so many people forming part of that vast tide of refugees from political and religious oppression which has poured into Great Britain over the past century, Joe Ehrlich was an ultra-Brit, passionately committed to keeping the Union Jack flying.
Born in Vienna during the First World War, he left in 1938 after the Nazi takeover of Austria brought inevitable persecution and the likelihood of a one-way trip to a concentration camp for for use by paratroopers, it came too late to enter production before the war ended.
In 1946 Ehrlich decided to set up as a motorcycle manufacturer, under the EMC/ Ehrlich Motor Company label, first at a tiny factory inTwyford Abbey Road on the Park Royal industrial estate in West London, close
