Naumann the ‘New Man’
One with quite a pedigree too, because Michael Naumann, now master of his own destiny at his own Naumann & Co emporium at Schermbeck, Germany (north of Duisburg), honed his trade at a classy school, having worked for no less than former AMD World Champion Andreas Bergerforth of Thunderbike fame for many years.
Michael’s AMD World Championship debut came in 2013 at Essen, Germany, with two bikes in the Top 20 of the Freestyle class at what was the first iteration of the AMD World Championship in Europe at Big Bike Europe, Essen.
The S&S Knuckle engined ’52-Stick’ was voted 10th, with ‘King Bling’, an S&S engined 1958 Shovel, coming 19th.
A year later, with the AMD World Championship at INTERMOT, Cologne, for the first time, ‘Mr Flatty’ (a 1942 WLC) gave Michael another 10th place, with ‘Virus’, an early Harley engined Shovel from 1958, making it a repeat-double in 19th place.
Given that success, and describing his second place in 2016 with ‘Simple Iron’ as his breakout year, is to do his success to date and the quality of his prior bikes a massive disservice.
However, with many people figuring his modified Ironhead Sportster (with German made TTS spoke wheels) as a short-odds win favorite before the Saturday judging (along with Larry Moore from the United States), it certainly caps off a remarkable 41 months of AMD World Championship success.
www.naumann.bike
