Order book opens for Silvio

After some toing and froing with interested customers, we have decided to open an order book for Silvio. The target price for this high end fully ergonomic racing bike frame is around USD2,400, but for the first 8 customers who pay a 50% deposit, there will be a reasonable discount on that figure. So, the specifications are as follows.

Silvio is sold as a frame set, including front triangle, main frame, rear triangle.

Silvio is a front wheel drive moving bottom bracket recumbent, fully compatible with road bike components, including racing bike gear/brake levers, brake calipers, chainlength, deraileurs, wheels, chainwheel and cluster. Everything from a standard high end road bike can be utilised, except for the frame and saddle. Silvio requires a 'braze on' style front deraileur. Anyone who currently has a road bike will be able to swap their favourite components over onto the Silvio frame.

Silvio is perhaps the only recumbent bike that is fully compatible with road bike componentry.
You will be able to run the latest Shimano Durace or Ultegra 10 speed systems, etc, without modification and with all components working as they were designed to.

Silvio is dual suspension bike, with a carbon fibre, elastomer dampened suspension system in the rear and a fusion suspension system in the front, integrating an adjustable compressed air suspension fork, with a carbon fibre chainstay suspension yoke in a soon to be patented new front triangle assembly. The frame is aluminum 7005 T6 and integrates the seat shells into the structure for added strength and weight savings.

The prototype bike weighs 11.5 kg, or 23.5 lbs, when using a standard cruzbike front triangle. But with our newly designed suspension front end, we may shave that down by another pound or two.

This is an ergonomic high performance bicycle, giving a full road bike riding experience. Full body involvement is possible with this configuration and the riding style is closely aligned to a road bike.

So if you would like to be one of the very first in the world to own this ground breaking design, our order book is now open.

UCI protected the cycling industry

Many recumbent enthusiasts bemoan the fiat that disqualified recumbent bicycles from competition in the 1930s, but considering the context of the times may bring a new appreciation of what that decision was about.

At that time, automobiles were rapidly altering community structure and bicycles as a means of transport were already on the way to becoming marginalised. The only realm where bicycles were surviving were as a sport. The essence of a team sport like cycling is that the impacts on your body are a consequence of the team's efforts and strategies, not just your own as is the case in an individual sport. Cycling then and now is much more a team sport, dependent on the phenomena of drafting to create the physiological interdependence among the riders of team. Now enter Manuel Morand on his new fangled recumbent, that you could not draft behind, and the premise of cycling as a team sport was removed. What would have happened if the UCI had not made its ban of recumbents? The standard pious position from the bent community is that many more people today would be using recumbent bicycles as transport. I doubt that.

In my view, without the UCI ban, cycling would have been in danger of collapsing as a team sport. Without sport sustaining the community's interest in the technology of cycling, and with all transport investment going into automobiles, the future of the industry would have looked rather bleak. Without community interest, we may well have been years behind in the development of cycling technology that we all take for granted today when we build our recumbents.