@Porky, great post.
I've worked with some brilliant German software engineers. They always seemed to be part mad scientist and part adventurer, but in a good way.
@Eye_m_no_angel, at least one of the Megola founders seemed to be a genuine motor-head. The kind of guy that was always building something. According to Wikipedia, one of the Megola founders, Fritz Cockerell, was a machinist in an airship factory, then in steam turbine construction, then moved to Rapp Motorenwerke, which later became Bayerische Motorenwerke (BMW), where he worked as a test engineer. Then he founded the Megola works. Then he developed an eight-cylinder two-stroke engine for a "German people-determined sports car" and a four-cylinder two-stroke engine, which was used for installation in a few prototypes of a car and a two-wheeler. Cockerell was more successful with auxiliary bike engines and light motorcycles, which were considered very reliable and sold under his own name. He later devoted himself to research on diesel engines for aircraft, turbine engines, and the Wankel engine.