Moulton in the Media – Page 6 – Moulton Bicycle Club

Korean Saddle And Bag Maker Aiming For Brooks And Carradice | BikeRadar

British saddle maker Brooks has owned the leather saddle category for decades, and now a Korean company called Zimbale is branching out into the lucrative US market via Hyde Park Cyclesports in Boise, Idaho.

"My own interest in Zimbale came about partly out of frustration with the unpredictable availability of similar products from existing suppliers and manufacturers," Hyde Park Cyclesports owner Jim Powers told BikeRadar. "I received an email from Zimbale and asked for some samples. I was impressed enough with the samples to begin a conversation about becoming the US distributor.

"We were able to come to an agreement, and now I'm working towards meeting their projections for sales in this country. Interbike is the first step."

According to Powers, the Zimbale brand was created by a small group of individuals with backgrounds in textiles, manufacturing and cycling who also saw the need for a more reliable source of fine leather saddles and leather and textile saddlebags. The group is in Korea, and the bags are made in Korea.

Korean Saddle And Bag Maker Aiming For Brooks And Carradice - BikeRadar.

Bike Show Moulton Special

The Bike Show will feature a Moulton special~~, tonight (Monday, 22nd September at 18:30 BST)~~.

UPDATE: The show was originally scheduled for tonight, but it has been rescheduled for next Monday, 29th September 2008.

The show will feature interviews with Alex Moulton, Tony Hadland, Mike Woolf, and others.

The Bike Show is a weekly half-hour show about cycling, presented by Jack Thurston. It focuses on

the art, science, politics and transcendental pleasure of cycling, in London and beyond. From Le Tour de France to roller-racing, from Bromptons to penny farthings, from Kraftwerk to hip-hop, from urban design to cycle touring, literature, history, travel, art, music and sport come together in a weekly half-hour show.

I have been a regular listener for a number of years and I thoroughly recommend it.

You can listen to tonight's show in the following ways:

on the radio at 104.4 FM in London.
Listen to the live stream on Resonancefm.com. The link is near the top, left.
After the show goes out live, the Bike Show website will have links to download or stream the recording.
The show is available as a podcast on iTunes or RSS.

Moulton Article in the Financial Times

Saturdays' Financial Times featured an interview with Alex Moulton.

The interviewer spent two half-days in conversation with Alex and described some of his daily routine.

He enters his adjoining workroom, where he pores over papers, manuals and books piled on long tables. For the next few hours, or “as long as I feel inspired and interested”, he works on the designs for his latest engineering creation

It explores in a fair amount of detail, Alex's career, from the family business, through BMC and the Moulton Bicycle.

The Mini’s suspension was a crude compromise – which Lord demanded for reasons of economy and speed of production – compared with the advanced hydroelastic system that Moulton devised for Issigonis’s 1962 1100. That four-wheel independent system used fluid under pressure to connect the front suspension with the rear, providing a smoothness of ride which had never been known in a family car. The 1100 and its successor, the 1300, were Britain’s best-selling family cars throughout the 1960s, consistently beating their leading rival, the Ford Cortina.

Most interestingly, there were hints of a new bicycle under development

a machine “more radical than anything I have ever done”.

...

Moulton has never yet designed a bicycle made from carbon fibre – immensely strong but expensive, and impossible to repair when damaged – but he dropped a few hints in our interviews that carbon composite materials might be included in the new, radical bicycle he is presently designing. “Watch this space,” he twinkled.

Alex Moulton featured in The Architects Journal

The Architects Journal website contains a feature on Alex Moulton, including a beautiful series of photographs taken in the Hall, the grounds, the factory and the museum.

Apart from the usual detail that any Moulton fan will be familar with, it contains some interesting insights from an architectural point of view.

Of Norman Foster's Moulton ownership, the article writes:

Foster's enthusiasm is not surprising: Moulton admits that his newest designs have a lot in common with High-Tech architecture, as they allow pure functionality to lead the form. 'With the first model, I was extremely concerned with appearance because I was doing a really brutal thing; I was imposing on the public an enormous change from the classical bicycle,' he explains. 'So, in order not to offend the public, I made the front and back forks nicely curved, and kept the suspension entirely hidden. But very soon, reality punished me – the rear forks bent.

Alex drew attention to the differences between architecture and engineering:

'Architecture has one or two less dimensions than engineering,' adds Moulton. 'I mean, things don't have to fly or go moving about. The things that I'm working on, mechanical things, they've got function. Architecture is more open to styling, to shape.'

And talking about folding bikes:

It is his quest for the most efficient, most technically brilliant ride that has kept Moulton's bicycles from folding. According to Moulton, the Brompton folds exceptionally well because it is designed for folding, whereas his bicycle is designed for exceptional performance on the road. Rather than fold, several of Moulton's models separate into two – an option he claims will not compromise the frame in any way.

'Scores of manufacturers that make a small-wheel bicycle imagine that they're simply folding bicycles,' adds Moulton. 'It hasn't dawned on them that actually, if you do it properly, a small-wheel bicycle is the best bicycle in the world.'

The full sets of photographs are available on Flickr, here, here and here

Rusty old bicycle!

From Times Online

A rusty old bicycle expected to raise just £1 for charity was sold on eBay for more than £500 to a collector in Japan who identified it as a rare British classic.

The yellow bicycle was given to Bruce Symes to raise money for Dart Sailability, a charity for disabled sailors. Mr Bruce, of Galmpton, Devon, gave it a guide price of £1 but bids were soon placed from the Far East – including Taiwan and Korea.

Collectors noticed that the bicycle was a Moulton Speedsix – the first six-speed bicycle made in Britain, with only 600 produced in the 1960s. It was sold for £537.