60 Years of the Moulton Bicycle
The new Moulton bicycle was launched at the Earl’s Court Cycle Show in November 1962 – sixty years ago.
A completely new concept in bicycle design, the Moulton bicycle introduced many ideas to the bicycle market, including small wheels, full suspension, an open - unisex - one size frame, and large platform luggage carriers. Radically different to the conventional diamond-framed cycle, the Earl’s Court Show was its first big test – how would the public react to this new machine, bristling with innovation? The photograph of the Moulton stand shows how serious Moulton was in ensuring his new bicycle was a success. The bicycle displays, the rolling rig to demonstrate the suspension, the comfortable seating areas, the telephone. Anyone who has exhibited at shows knows how the organisers love to charge for electricity, lighting, anything they can think of. It is difficult to imagine how much that temporary telephone line cost, but it certainly played its part in the history of the Moulton bicycle.
The Earl’s Court Cycle Show bicycle displays including the rolling rig and the telephone.
The show doors opened and the people poured in… and the Moulton stand was soon overwhelmed. Moulton’s Marketing Manager, the racing cyclist David Duffield, recalled that interest at the show was such that “we had to beat them off with sticks” and, on that first day Alex Moulton telephoned the works at Bradford on Avon to order that the new factory – then being built – to be doubled in size. Later in the week Sydney Wheeler called Alex at the show with a message from Leonard Lord and George Harriman (Chairman and Managing Director of the British Motor Corporation (BMC) respectively) saying “Don’t hesitate in taking orders because we, BMC, will make the bicycle for you”. This came as a relief to Alex as – aside from the fact that he never wanted to go into manufacturing anyway – it had become obvious during the show that Moulton’s new factory – even doubled in size - would never be capable of meeting demand for the new bicycle.
This extraordinary offer from BMC not only allowed far greater volumes to be produced but also spooked Raleigh, who until then had been very dominant in the cycle industry. Raleigh, who had spent two years examining the Moulton bicycle concept before rejecting it, looked on in alarm as BMC, a company many times their size, geared up to enter the bicycle market. The Moulton bicycle itself was entirely new but Alex Moulton and BMC had history already, and deeply impressive history at that, as Moulton was responsible for the revolutionary rubber suspension on the Issigonis Mini and the interconnected Hydrolastic suspension that would become a defining feature of BMC’s 1960s cars.
The Moulton bicycle was assembled in Moulton’s new Bradford on Avon factory and, in much greater volumes, at BMC’s Fisher and Ludlow plant at Kirkby on Merseyside. By the summer of 1963 production was reaching up towards 1,500 bicycles per week. After many years of declining sales, the cycle market was enjoying a resurgence as the Moulton bicycle became an icon of the ‘swinging sixties’ – the mini bicycle to go with the mini car and the mini skirt. Led by David Duffield, the Moulton sales team (all cyclists themselves) sped around the country with the new bicycles on roof racks on their liveried Mini vans. Within a year, Moulton Bicycles was the second-largest cycle maker in the country.
One of the Moulton sales team’s liveried Mini vans.
Moulton created the small-wheeled bicycle. A handful of low-volume experimental builders preceded him, yet a wide plethora of machines followed in his tyre tracks. Dawes, Raleigh, Bickerton and even Brompton owe a debt of gratitude to Alex Moulton’s innovative bicycle. Before the launch of the Moulton bicycle in 1962, the small-wheeled bicycle simply did not exist; yet by 1970 one-third of bicycles sold in Britain were small-wheelers. Alex Moulton’s new bicycle had changed the cycling world forever.
Now, sixty years on, the Moulton bicycle is still being manufactured in Bradford on Avon and is an acknowledged design classic. Production is soon to return to the original factory that Alex ordered to be doubled in size, all those years ago. New designs continue to appear, and the latest NS Safari has generated a huge amount of interest, but today we salute the pioneering spirit of the original Moulton bicycle and its unique creator, Alex Moulton. I remember asking him about those early days and the courage that must have been needed to launch such a revolutionary design of bicycle, and he was uncharacteristically nonchalant: “What you must understand – and you probably never will – is that in the 1960s we thought we could do anything.” Norman Foster would later describe the Moulton bicycle as “the greatest work of twentieth century British design”. Who are we to argue? If ever there was an embodiment to the maxim “the greatest risk is to take no risks”, the Moulton bicycle is it. At sixty years old we celebrate it, and its sheer audacity in breaking the mould. Chapeau!
The 1960s male mansplaining the new Moulton bicycle features to its new owner.
Dan Farrell 2022