The Club For Classic Japanese Motorcycles

Japanese Motorcycle Histories - Meguro

Meguro Motorcycles: better known at that time as the "senior make and the king of four strokes".

Meguro entered the motorcycle industry in 1937.  Having a good relationship with the government, the people at Meguro took advantage of army orders.  Their first motorcycle was the Z97: a 500cc rocker-valve motorcycle influenced by the Swiss Motosacoche.  It's worth mentioning this model was a success for the factory and the Z97 was in production till the fifties.

Through the years, Meguro produced some very nice 250cc and 350cc rocker-valve, single cylinder models as well as high performance twins. All of them with a very strong British influence. Then and thanks to the commercial success they were living, they also launched a rocker-valve 125 cc for their low end range and a twin cylinder 650cc to accompany the already existing 500cc.  But it was in 1958, when Meguro tried to get rid of their British influence, when things started to go wrong...

Based on a winning prototype of Mount Asama (one of the biggest races that time), Meguro Motorcycles produced three nice and elegant machines with overhead camshaft: the 125cc E3, the 250cc F and the 350cc Y A. Unfortunately these bikes turned out to be too heavy and didn't get the buyers' attention.  Meguro will soon return to rocker valve models.

Meguro Motorcycles remained as one of the top 10 manufacturers till 1960, but due to some bad decisions, as the ones mentioned above, the company started to decline and was soon bought by Kawasaki.  In 1960 Meguro signed an initial agreement with Kawasaki Motorcycles, and in 1962 they had completely disappeared.