Walled Up Before WWI: The Only Traub Motorcycle Ever Found and the Son Who Never Came Back

In 1967, a plumber repairing a leak in a Chicago building broke open a brick wall and found a complete, perfectly preserved motorcycle hidden inside. The name on the tank read "Traub" a motorcycle brand no historian had ever heard of. Today the 1916 Traub is often called the rarest motorcycle in the world: a hand-built American V-twin whose engine cases, gearbox and unique twin-brake system match no known production motorcycle. The building's elderly owner said his son had walled it up before leaving for World War I and never came back. But no theft was ever reported, and no one has ever proven who built it. In this motorcycle documentary, we follow the true story of the Traub motorcycle mystery from the machine shops of early 1900s Chicago and a forgotten 1907 magazine letter by a machinist named Gottlieb Richard Traub, to the WWI-era wall, the 1967 discovery, and the collectors who kept this one-of-a-kind machine alive. Classic American Motorcycles tells the forgotten true stories behind vintage American motorcycles and the people who rode, built and hid them. If you enjoy classic motorcycle history, subscribe for more untold stories and tell us in the comments: who do you think built the Traub?