It’s been a fun if contentious year in bike design. 2016 saw still more hubless bicycles, futuristic e-bike concepts that defy human nature, with room left over for good old fashioned bike porn. But our most popular bike stories this year ranged more critical, more humorous, and more genuinely surprising.
Our top cycling story was the announcement of Ikea’s surprising and surprisingly ridable flat packed bike, the Sladda. While the weird little belt drive commuter hasn’t shot to the top of many bike aficionado’s gift lists, it appears to be hitting the introductory market as expected. It also hasn’t totally destroyed local bike shops. Maybe the cheerful little IKEA instructions guy wasn’t as good as real mechanics at explaining the difference between a tire and a wheel?
On the other hand, another beloved bike moment suggests knowing your bike anatomy might be overrated. Italian product designer Gianluca Gimini turned millions of heads with his sweet and hilarious renderings of bicycles drawn by people with wonderfully imperfect memory of bike mechanics. The outcome was Velocipedia, a series of lovingly interpreted and surprisingly believable nonsense bikes that even Edward Gorey would be jealous of.
But being savvy on bike anatomy isn’t always lighthearted. This year saw Ms. Femke van den Driessche convicted in the first case of “Mechanical Doping” during a heated race at the 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships. It was a particularly intriguing event, in part because it marked the first ever instance of proven mechanical cheating, and because it brought interesting (and amoral) products like the Vivax Assist into more common design conversation. A sad but interesting turn for competitive sports but an interesting puzzle for bike assist engineering.
The most hands-on bike moment of 2016 was the return of the Bamboobee build-it-yourself bamboo bike kit, which promised the BIYer a bike frame in under five hours (among a lot else). The update included a more flexibly oriented jig, and with more potential frame styles. Does it live up to the (expensive and labor intensive) DIY hype? I still don’t know, because if you’re smart enough to do carbon layups you probably don’t actually need this kit. But it does look like a mega fun present.
To cap us off is my favorite bike discovery of the year, the Strandbeest Bike by Blaine Eliott and his partner JP. What started as a hapless but useful single speed went through a series of bewildering and unnecessary modifications to produce something that’s fascinating to look at, but terrifying to use on the road. At this point this feels a bit like a metaphor for the year, but I’m still impressed as hell.
Here’s hoping that 2017 has even weirder, cooler, and safer(?) rides ahead for us.
http://www.core77.com/posts/59041/The-Best-of-Bikes-in-2016