Ural. Leitz Summitar 50mm

A cursory glance at this motorcycle and sidecar will tell you that this is no contemporary machine.  Yet it is.  The design dates back to 1930s Germany, an R71 BMW with the characteristic horizontally opposed flat-twin engine. 
Here's the story:  Stalin, having just gone through the disastrous war with  Finland - not taught in Russian history books - , and having watched what the Germans did to Poland, realized that the USSR was not equipped for a mobile war in extreme cold conditions.  When the Molotov - von Ribbentrop non-aggression pact was signed in 1939, some sort of blanket permission was given for the BMW R71 design to be used by the USSR.  Irony indeed.  Five motorcycles were covertly bought through Swedish intermediaries, they were shipped to Russia where they were stripped down completely, reverse engineered, molds and dies made for every part, and production begun.  As the Russians watched in horror the speed and effectiveness of the Blitzkrieg, they worried that the initial factory for the motorcycles, set up in Moscow, was not safe.  It was decided to move production to a new factory in Irbit in the Ural mountains, out of the Luftwaffe's reach.  Originally, the new motorcycles were only for military use, but in the late 1950s, the factory, now called Irbit Motorcycle Works, made them available to the public and for export as the Ural.  In the U.K. they were marketed as the Cossack.  Thanks to Wiki for all this background.
The story of my Blip is thus:  The Ural belongs to one of my Editor's co-workers.  He has two offices at two different locations on campus.  So sometimes the Ural is there when I drop her off at work, and most times it's not.  The Blip gods smiled today: I had my camera with me, even an appropriate 1950s Leitz lens, the fabulous Summitar, and some time alone with the Ural.  The Extra affords a close-up of the anachronistic-looking pipes and tubes of this strange, yet handsome-looking creature.  I forgot to mention that the third wheel holding up the sidecar, is driven by a separate drive shaft, making the Ural 3-Wheel drive.  How clever is that?