The story
Founding
Joseph Berliner founded his motorcycle business in New York City distributing and repairing Zündapp motorcycles east of the Mississippi in 1951, using contacts with that German manufacturer he had developed before World War II. He was a Hungarian Jewish refugee from the Holocaust who had spent time in Hungarian slave labor camps, and had lost 16 close family members on arrival at Auschwitz. Michael Berliner, the youngest of 5 brothers, was saved only because Joseph, and another Berliner brother, both of whom the SS intended to exploit for their skill as mechanics, convinced them that young Michael, too, was a mechanic. The Berliner brothers survived by maintaining a fleet of German army trucks. One brother would die of hunger and typhus, leaving only Joseph, Michael, and two other siblings alive after the war.
Prior to the Holocaust, Joseph Berliner worked in his father's radio-bicycle-motorcycle shop, and had received schooling in mechanics and business. After the war he assisted in Jewish relief in Frankfurt, Germany, and was able to find his wife who had been liberated by the Swedish Red Cross. As the sons of a Hungarian anti-Communist World War I war hero, the brothers feared returning to their Soviet-controlled homeland, and so emigrated to the US.
Timeline
1941
Joseph Berliner taken to slave labor camp.
1944
Berliner brothers transferred to Auschwitz.
1947
Emigrated to the US.
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1951
Distributed Zündapp East of the Mississippi.
1957
Took over International Motorcycle Company, where Joseph Berliner had previously been a partner, including their US distributorship of Zündapp.
1958
Began Ducati distributorship.
1959
Headquarters moved from New York City to Railroad Ave. and Plant Road in Hasbrouck Heights, NJ.
1961
Became sole Norton distributor for all US.
1963
Became sole US Matchless distributor.
1965
Evel Knievel's new motorcycle stunt troupe secured the sponsorship of Berliner Motor Corporation, who supplied them with a fleet of Norton Scramblers. In one version of the origin of stage name "Evel Knievel", it was Bob Blair of Berliner Motor Corporation who encouraged using the nickname rather than Bobby Knievel.
1968
Berliner Motor abruptly refused an entire shipment of over 3,000 Ducati motorcycles they had ordered, as the stocks they had on hand were not selling quickly. To get themselves off the hook from Ducati, they turned to Associated Motor Cycles (AMC) in the UK, and used the leverage of the vast USA market they controlled, informing AMC that they would be needing no more of the struggling factory's Matchless motorcycles unless AMC found someone to purchase the unwanted Ducati shipment. The effect of Berliner's actions rippled through the UK motorcycle world, as this was a sizable flood of stock to enter the smaller, and already soft, UK market. The existing, formerly exclusive, Ducati distributor refused to sell parts to anyone whose bike had been purchased from what they saw as an illegitimate player in the field. These events are related by author Mick Walker, so as to explain how Walker got his start as a Ducati dealer when he came to purchase a substantial portion of this shipment in an effort to secure parts to aid the needy population of orphaned UK Ducati owners.
1984
Moto Guzzi distributorship changes hands to Benelli/Moto Guzzi North America.
Berliner Motor Corporation is out of business.
From Wikipedia’s article on Berliner Motor Corporation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3