Q&A | AUG 2018
Moulton Bicycles
Interview with Dan Farrell (second left), here with Moulton team. The company was founded by Dr Alex Moulton in 1962.
What do you do?
The Moulton Bicycle Company design, manufacture and sell the unique and iconic small-wheeled full-suspension Moulton bicycle; first designed by Alex Moulton in the late 1950s. We have an interest in the automotive work that Alex Moulton did as well – he designed rubber cone springs for the original Mini.
Why do you do it?
What drove Alex Moulton, and what I’d like to think drives most people, is he wanted to make the world a better place. He was prompted by the fuel rationing during the Suez Crisis to ride a bicycle “as a serious alternative means of locomotion”. He thought he could improve on the conventional ‘classic’ bicycle, Moulton also wanted to make his mark but his main driver was to make things better.
Inspiration?
Alex Moulton was inspired to make a bicycle that was “more pleasing and more convenient to own and use” – and one of our goals is to make a better bicycle along the lines of the way that Moulton thought. We’re very inspired by what Alex Moulton did, and by what his forefathers did too because the industrial legacy here is extraordinary.
Challenges?
We face lots of different challenges. One is the virtual disappearance of the cycle industry within the UK. When I started, something like 70% of bicycles sold in the UK were made in the UK and now it’s about 0.1%. Fortunately for us, Alex Moulton foresaw this and when he designed his advanced engineering bicycle in the early 1980s, he said he only wanted to do high-quality, high-value, low-volume because this is the way that manufacturing in the UK is going to go. Moulton deliberately designed the ‘AM’ bicycle to be labour intensive, in contrast to how designers conventionally work – so we have lots of challenges with the supply of the parts and the expertise. We’ve got an extraordinarily loyal workforce but it’s difficult to find people with the expertise. Nobody is really taught the traditional fabrication skills any more.
Another challenge is the regulatory framework in the UK which says what we are allowed to do. You can get these very perverse situations where if you make a bike in China (to sell in the UK) you can use a certain solder that’s easier to work – but we’re not allowed to use that same solder in the UK. There are many other examples of how these regulations act against us.
If you define it by what we produce, we’re not making bicycles, we’re making works of art. It is a technical product, but the quality and the aesthetic are absolutely fundamental to what it is.
Alex Moulton in the Oak Room drawing office
We’re trying to do things better and that’s why we are different.
Pleasure or pain projects?
It is often the things that are most technically difficult that cause you the most pain but, at the end of the day, give you the most satisfaction when you resolve them. For example, on some of the bicycles we have a front fork which is suspended using rubber-end torsion springs. We realised that lots of owners wanted to carry a load but the front fork was never designed with that in mind. We had to take it apart and start again, making it stronger and out of stainless steel. We stalled for a very long time on the fact that we couldn’t get anybody to make a stainless steel tube of a suitable shape. Finally, Reynolds Tubing helped us. It’s very expensive but it transforms the bicycle and we have this thing that is almost perfect. And now some people are asking us to retro-fit these because they prefer it to the original.
What does quality look like?
If you define it by what we produce, we’re not making bicycles, we’re making works of art. It is a technical product, but the quality and the aesthetic are absolutely fundamental to what it is. It’s very unusual to develop such a highly-engineered item where you can’t hide anything; it has to be like a work of art. The original Moulton bicycle has a geometrical aesthetic that no other small-wheeled bicycle has. I think that the quality comes from a position of deep understanding, a dedication to detail, and a degree of inconsequence of cost.
Do you ever break the rules?
Moulton’s small-wheeled bicycle broke with the cycle industry’s accepted norm of the diamond frame bicycle with large wheels. He wasn’t concerned about moving away from the norm if he had good reasons to do so. He made his own rules. You have to think differently – that’s what design is about.
What makes you different?
The simple answer to that question is everything – what we make, how it is designed, how it is built, where it is made. All these things are pretty unique in what we do. Many people like to talk about distinctive capability – we’ve got no shortage of it. Everything we do is designed to improve on what has gone before, and usually ends up being different to what others do – often because we ask different questions. We are not about ‘different for different’s sake’; the Moulton bicycle is so acclaimed because it works so well. We’re trying to do things better and that’s why we are different.
I think a studio is a bit like a laboratory; you set up experiments simply to see what happens.
How do you keep it fresh?
This is an unusual challenge for us as the only man with any real authority to change anything is now dead. What we do is bring a different viewpoint. We continuously refine what we’re trying to do – whenever anybody ever asked Alex “what is the best Moulton bicycle?”, he’d always reply “the next one.” In some ways, we get forced into changing things. The cycle components business may be the least sustainable business in the world – components change all the time. You have to keep changing things merely so you can buy cycle parts, but you have to do that whilst staying within the original ethos.
How does Bath influence your work?
I’m a great believer in creative space. Having a lot of people around, working in a beautiful place, makes you do more. If you work somewhere which is very beautiful, like Bath, you want to maintain that. When you look out of the window and all is right with the world, it is easier to do what you’re trying to do.
Dreams for the future?
I’d like to see many more people riding bicycles. And I would like to see the resurgence of the practical bicycle and obviously I’d love them to be Moulton bicycles. I think the cycle industry is terribly fashion led, particularly in the UK – and it’s as if those who want to buy bicycles work their way through a continuous stream of hopelessly impractical bicycles, rather than actually thinking about what they need. I’d like a lot more people to be riding bicycles that are more pleasing and more convenient to own and to use. I’d love to see the continuation and the recognition of the work that Moulton and his forefathers did, not only within the cycle industry but in a much wider area. I think these things are too easily forgotten about but they have great significance.
Interview taken from the Made in Bath book.
To discover more makers and read their stories, get a free download of the book here.