Craftwork – Bike Snob NYC

Further to yesterday’s post, there’s finding a free Univega in the street, and then there’s paying well over fifty thousand American Fun Tickets at auction for a vintage bicycle:

But this isn’t just any bike, it’s the guy from Kraftwerk’s bike:

The titanium Speedwell bike ridden by Florian Schneider in Kraftwerk’s 1984 video for the band’s Tour de France remix has been sold at auction, fetching $57,600, a price that would net you three modern top-tier road bikes.

Wait a minute. $57,600 would net you three modern top-tier road bikes? That’s it?!? I mean, sure, I know it’s possible to buy a $19,200 road bike, but the article seems to suggest this is the going rate, which can’t be right. Indeed, a cursory check seems to indicate even a Colnago Pocačar “Special Edition” V-Whatever starts at “only” $17,500:

By the way, I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about Colnago, because it makes me extremely happy to see they refer to the bike’s “color” and not its (barf) “colorway.” Also, they say the color is “Inspired by Tadej Pocačar success,” and it looks pretty messy, too. So who was the painter, Jonas Vingegaard?

He’s mad, but you can’t really blame him.

Checking in on other top-tier road bike prices, an S-Wanks with Dura-Ace is a mere $13,499.99:

Not that I’m about to take back every bad thing I’ve ever said about Specialized, but they too deserve credit for referring to the bike’s “color”–which in this case is “Gloss Fjord Metallic,” also a very a common name in Norway, as it happens:

[Gloss Fjord Metallic and his wife Icelandic Blue Sportwägen]

As for the Kraftwerk bike, having ridden a vintage titanium bicycle myself, I can only imagine how flexy it must be:

Though it also came with three Polaroids:

The bike was listed with an estimate of $4,000 to $6,000, so the $57,600 sold price (plus 28 per cent buyer’s premium) is a huge sum. A bike stand and three Polaroid photos of Schneider riding the bike were part of the lot.

Which I’m sorry to say are obvious fakes, as that’s clearly Jan Heine:

I mean it’s even got Panaracer tires, duh:

While most of the groupset looks to be original, including the slightly perished lever hoods, the handlebars have been retaped and the intact-looking Panaracer tyres, new cables and Crane bell suggest that the bike may have been ridden more recently than 1984.

Why the buyer didn’t snatch up George Plimpton’s Y-Foil instead is beyond me:

Every so often I check to see if the AI still thinks George Plimpton owned a Y-Foil. Half the time it says he did, and the other half it says he didn’t and that it’s a joke perpetuated by a certain bike blogger. I guess at this point the Y-Foil isn’t Plimpton’s anymore so much as it’s Schrödinger’s.

Speaking of exotic bicycles, every so often some company decides they’re gonna make wood happen:

The reason?

TimberTech uses CNC-machined wooden shells bonded by internal membrane joints and aluminum nodes in stress-heavy zones. Ornus says the structure creates controlled stiffness and predictable handling, with natural vibration absorption.

The frames pass ISO 4210 safety testing and go through vacuum drying and waterproof treatment to limit swelling or warping. Ornus offers a lifetime warranty, underscoring its claim that wood can be engineered to meet modern performance standards.

In other words:

As you may recall, I also used to have a wooden bicycle:

Renovo sent it to me to try shortly before going bankrupt (the brand is now under new ownership), and it is now with Classic Cycle in the Tan Tenovo wing of their museum. As I recall, it did ride quite smoothly, and I enjoyed it very much (I even raced it for awhile)–though it did start creaking, and cracking:

Here’s an excerpt from an email I received from Renovo’s owner at the time, and it should give you some perspective on wood as a bicycle frame material (I bolded some key phrases):

We’re fans way over here but reading you as we do, there was some trepidation in sending you that bike. On the other hand, although some may have pilloried you as a curmudgeon, you’re certainly an honest and entertaining one, so I figured what the heck, send it, we know it’s a great bike. But still, risky business, which does of course define entrepreneurs anyway.

And sure enough, the effing chainstay split which was a big Oh Shit. So, we built another one for you and in looking for the problem, ​dry fitting the dropouts caused another chainstay split. Turns out the holding fixture on the CNC had worn and the part was moving slightly when the CNC drilled the holes. This caused the chainstay holes to be just slightly misaligned with the dropout, but enough to cause the split when the screw was forced into alignment. We actually do inspect the bikes before shipping, but…

We seriously do not wish to test our bikes on our customers and sure as hell not our reviewers, but wood is an unruly bitch, not to mention the complexity of consistently weaving all these parts into a coherent whole. Over the last ten years we’ve solved all the process and species related problems generally, but still we have a liberal warranty because new issues like your chainstay pop up now and then…and so we learn. I figure steel bikes were invented by the smarter wood bike builders ​back in about 1895 ​when they grew tired of learning.

​So will Ornus be around to repair their own “bitches” when they start getting “unruly?” That’s the €4.490 question.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t consider a wooden bicycle if you’ve got lots of money, you know what you’re getting into, and you enjoy the craftsmanship and/or the novelty factor more than you value reliability. Plus, when it comes to stuff with wheels, some people just really enjoy riding around on a head-turner, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Certainly the Renovo was the most head-turning bike I’ve ever ridden, and it was rare to go an entire ride without someone asking me, “Hey, is that wood?”

The second-most unsolicited comment-generating bike I’ve ever ridding was (and is, since I still have it), the Plimptonator…

…ith my various Rivendae rounding out the podium. Anyone who rides a Rivendell (including Old Man Petersen himself) will tell you that people constantly make admiring and/or condescending remarks about your “antique” bicycle–though I will say that I tend to de-beautify my own bikes over time, so I used to get lots of comments when the Homer looked like this:

But I get fewer now that it looks like this:

And in fact this one, which as you can imagine people also notice, is quickly closing the gap–though that requires familiarity with both the name and the colorway, and I suspect the majority of riders I pass (or, more accurately, who pass me) just think it’s some old bike:

How wrong they are.