He was a man who never applied the brakes. His maxim: "Speed brings safety". But Mike Kluge wanted to be prepared for emergencies. And he was paid handsomely for it. In the mid-nineties, he wore neon yellow between his beefy shoulders. "Mike the Bike" had a new brake, a Magura. The Swabian company had scraped together the last of its money to screw the stoppers onto Kluge's handlebars. It paid off: The company's cash registers literally rang with every pull of the lever. The world fame of the first hydraulic rim brake took its course.
The "HS 33" of today has a long history. If you want to understand it, you have to look back 20 years. Back then, the air was getting thin for the Swabian company Magura. The great days of the German moped brands were over. Kreidler, Hercules and co. were out, the confirmation money no longer went into 25 kilometre per hour speedy rattlers. This also became a problem for Magura, as the company had been supplying brakes for these exhaust bikes for 50 years. Now good advice was expensive. A virtue was made of necessity and the Swabians proved that they are "clever" inventors. The motorbike know-how was modified for bicycles and bolted onto Dutch bikes at the end of the 1980s - at that time as so-called "ABS brakes". But the golden trough of the MTB boom completely passed Magura by. None of the major bike brands were interested in fitting hydraulic brakes to their bikes. The main thing was to sell bikes by the containerful, regardless of whether they were any good or not.
But the turning point came with Mike Kluge. First, the "HS-Mountain" bike model was given a colour makeover. The plain black gave way to neon yellow. A "RACE-LINE" was added to the simple name "HS Mountain". That sounded fast and Kluge proved that it could be. The professional industry took notice and with John Tomac came the accolade for Magura. The bike legend rode an "HS".
The "HS Mountain" was followed two years later by the "HS 22", which was even more powerful and reliable. But that was not the end of the evolution of this brake. The engineers wanted to finalise their idea. In 1995, the bike world saw the "HS 33" for the first time at Eurobike. The engineers had been working on it for nine months. At first glance, the new brake was nothing more than a natural development of the original Magura from 1987, but a small piece of metal made the "HS 33" an absolute bestseller: the "Evolution" adapter, with which the hydraulic rim brake could be screwed onto the Canti base. This seemed to eliminate the last teething problem of the Magura stoppers, the annoying mounting and dismounting. The brakes were also put on a diet, which was particularly noticeable on the brake levers. The slave cylinder with the legendary click-on brake pads is still in use today.
Over the past ten years, the "HS 33" has become the Levi's "501" of bike sport. Freeriders may smile about the brake - but the number of marathon riders, globetrotters, kilometre eaters and year-round bikers who swear by the Swabian stopper is increasing. It hangs timelessly on the bikes of this world and brakes and brakes ... Only bleeding can be a greasy affair - if it ever becomes necessary.
(Text: Björn Scheele)
