Mick,
Interesting! I didn't realize that those bikes had a
history pre-dating the versions built by Lotus Cars. When
Boardman rode his bike in the Olympics, the Lotus Cars
propaganda machine was going full bore, basically claiming that
the bike's innovations came directly from the knowledge of
aerodynamics gleaned from their work on the "ground effects" F1
cars. There are even proper Lotus chassis type numbers for
those bikes: Type 108 for the original Boardman bike and Type
110 for the customer versions.
One last note before we go back to on-topic discussions: a
while ago there was a discussion of what "ex works" would mean
when talking about a bicycle. Well, if the bike in the auction
is truly Boardman's bike (i.e. a type 108 as opposed to a type
110) then I suppose it could legitimately be called "ex works".
Best regards to all,
Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia
> The Lotus Carbon bikes originate for an original project
> started way back in 1982 by Mike Burrows a racing cyclist and
> engineer. The original quote from Mike says in 1982 " As far
> as I am concerned, with this design I re-invented the
> bicycle". In the pre Lotus days the bike was called the
> Windcheater.
> During his devolpment of the Windcheater Mike visited
> Coventry's Transport Museum and whilst there in1986 he
> spotted a Victorian era bicycle called the Invincible. The
> invincible did not have standard front forks but a single
> arm. this gave him the idea for the aerodynamic monoblade
> which was a feature on both the windcheater and the later
> Lotus Sport. Mike Burrows devolped the bike up until 1991
> when he got in touch with an old Belgium acquantince Rudi
> Thom. He was a good amateur cyclists in his day and was an ex
> Formulae Two driver and by coincidence worked as a devolpment
> enginer for Lotus cars. The rest is histiory Olympic Pursuit
> Gold in the Barcelona 92 games and from the original track
> bike to the road bike.
>
>
> Yours in cycling. Michael Butler Huntingdon UK.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. http://www.yahoo.com
>
> _______________________________________________
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page.
http://www.yahoo.com