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NKB Castle

Nihon Keijidousha Kougyo, a small company based in Hiroshima, Japan, produced this motorcycle. It is a pre-war machine, but the actual date of manufacture has not yet been determined. We believe it to be around 1937-1939.

We do know that the same company produced a similar 90 cc motorcycle, The NKB Junior, as late as 1945. Some of the specifications for the 1945 model follow:

Length 2005mm Displacement 89.6cc
Width 740mm Bore/Stroke 44mm x 59mm
Height 980 mm Top Speed 60Km/h
Weight 68Kg (149 lbs)

Since the factory was in Hiroshima, it is possible that it was destroyed in the World War II bombing of that city, but that is not for certain.

The company was not well known and apparently did not produce motorcycles in large numbers. It is possible that components on these machines were not made by NKB.

Many of the small Japanese manufacturers in that time did not fabricate complete motorcycles but made frames and other parts and purchased engines from Meguro or Kawasaki.

This is just conjecturing at this point, but Meguro was the first manufacture to make a complete, top-to-bottom, motorcycle in 1937. If the company was small, it is most likely that they purchased components from someone else and if it was made before 1937, we are pretty certain that some components were purchased and assembled.