History – Page 7 – Moulton Bicycle Club

Alex Moulton: A Lifetime in Engineering

A new book on Alex Moulton has just been published, and it was unveiled at Bradford-on-Avon last weekend.

It is based on an interview by John Pinkerton in 1998 at The Hall in Bradford on Avon. Some people might remember the VHS video of the same name based on the same interview.

In it Alex Moulton talks about his life growing up in Bradford on Avon, the family business and how he developed a love for cycling and engineering. It contains fascinating insights into the development of the original Moulton bicycle, the involvement with Raleigh, the AM era, as well as his automotive career and life outside engineering.

The list price is €14.99, and the ISBN is 978-3-8258-0755-9. A big box was delivered to the Moulton Bicycle Club at the weekend, and many of these were sold for £5. If you contact Moulton Preservation you may be able to get a copy.
It's published by LIT Verlag in Berlin, Germany, and distributed in the UK by Global Book Marketing, 99B Wallis Rd, London, E9 5LN. It's not yet listed in their catalogue at http://www.centralbooks.co.uk/.

Distribution in the US is by Transaction Publishers, orders@transactionpub.com.

BoA 2007: Alex Moulton's greatest hits

Alex Moulton and the MBC experts called for examples of each model from the first Standard to the present day from which they judged the best example of each - usually the most original and well maintained. They scrutinised each model in such detail, that they ran out of time at the AM-GT.

Below are a few shots that took my fancy.

The need for speed...

Paul Grogan's Speedsix skips into view...

These gorgeous Speedsixes lost out because their mudguards weren't original...

This one had the original alloy guards...

A lovely blue Moulton S Safari...

And an S Stowaway...

But winner of the S-class was this immaculate chrome S Safari, owned by Ken Butterfield

Lovely rear end...

The crowed oohed and ahhed at the sight of shiny chrome...

Mike Woolf's completely original Moulton S Deluxe was not eligible, due to being a Moulton Preservation bike...

Alex Moulton told some of the history of the S-Works, and the work of Jack Lauterwasser...

Can't read the decals from here, but I think this was a Series 2 Deluxe...

Mike Woolf described the Raleigh era of this Mark 3 as a "mixed blessing...

On to the Alex Moulton era and the AM 7...

Alex Moulton described how the F-frame evolved into the Y-frame prototype, which eventually led to the X-frame - the basic shape of the spaceframe AM.

He recounted feeling distraught when some French club racers told him the Y-frame was wonderful, but too heavy. This led him to develop a frame structure that was entirely different to anything that went before.

Here is a lovely AM2...

Checking a serial number on an AM Speed...

Finally, the AM-GT... the first stainless steel model. Alex Moulton talked about how wonderful a material stainless steel was, and alluded to the skill of the silver brazers at Bradford on Avon. He told the owner of this AM-GT that stainless steel lasts forever, and he would pass the bike on to his great grandchildren.

Weird and not at all wonderful

BikeRadar is at the Eurobike exhibition, and reports this morning on a new bicycle from Cannondale

...the Hooligan, a small-wheeled, hub geared urban machine that looks like the bastard offspring of a BMX and a Moulton.

It sounds weird but it might just work. Those small wheels will give you excellent acceleration (ideal for urban riding) and a long wheel base should make for stable and predictable handling, the hub gears mean low maintenance, and the burly frame certainly looks tough enough to cope with city streets - we shall see, we've already ordered one in for test.

Of course we all know that Moultons are pure breeds, and while it's vaguely possible that a frustrated early APB might fantasize about a dirty weekend with something classy like a Rivendell, it would certainly never mix it's genes with a BMX.

When you look at those fat tyres, only one thing comes to mind... the Raleigh RSW.

Fed up with newcomer Moulton selling so many bikes, Raleigh needed to hit back.
They badly needed to compete with the Moulton bicycle, but couldn't get around Moulton's suspension patents.

So they developed the RSW. At first glance it was vaguely similar to a Moulton. They used balloon tyres to get around the discomfort factor of unsuspended small wheels.

Raleigh RSW

The RSW was inferior in every way to the Moulton. It was 6lbs heavier and felt like cycling through treacle. But it was cheaper to manufacture, so Raleigh could sell it more cheaply.

The unsuspecting customer, walking into a bike shop to buy a Moulton could easily be convinced to buy this thing that looked a lot like a Moulton, but was over 10% cheaper, and had Raleigh's name on it.

Neo-liberal mass market corporation's greedy marketing tactics win out over sound engineering shocker.

So is history about to repeat itself. I don't think so. Firstly, Alex Moulton is unlikely to sell his company to Cannondale, as he did to Raleigh in the 1960's.

But more importantly, the original Moulton was sold to the mass market, and so was vulnerable to mass market competition, and big bicycle manufacturers.

Today's Moultons are a very much specialised product for a niche market. People who buy Moultons are a very different segment of the market to the majority of the market: mountain bikes that never see a mountain, junk hybrids, supermarket bike shaped objects and tour de france clones.