“I would say that this is probably the best bicycle ever built with an automotive name on it.” These were the carefully chosen words of Marcus Storck when he unveiled the limited edition Storck Fascenario.3 Aston Martin at the Rouleur Classic show in 2017.
There seemed to be a hesitation, an advance caveating of the project, and we compounded it in our original report: “It is a bike of brazen extravagance and one that Storck concedes will be highly sought after by collectors.”
Over the years there have been countless collaborations between bike brands and sports car manufacturers, some of them serious engineering exercises but others no more than luxury items with handlebars or just simple sticker jobs.
The launch of the Bugatti Factor ONE generated all those same reactions that nine years ago made the normally self-assured Storck so anxious. On social media there were rows of heart eyes emojis, chilli peppers and fire, but also comments such as “burn it before it lays eggs”. There is a legitimate question that needs to be asked: does cycling really need another hypercar bicycle? Well, history proves that yes it does.
The mutual attraction for high-end bike and car brands is understandable: both are preoccupied with speed, performance and style. For bike manufacturers in particular, aligning themselves with a legendary sports marque is a way into the glitz, glamour and mythology.
Naturally the offspring of these unions are expensive. When Bianchi launched the SF01, the first in a series of bikes produced in collaboration with Ferrari, the cynics were quick to point out that, for €15,000 (a very high price at the time) one would be paying well over the odds for what was essentially a Bianchi Specialissima with a smattering of cosmetic Ferrari amendments.
Limited editions command an even higher price. Swiss brand BMC released only 50 Impec Lamborghinis, produced in 2013 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Italian supercar manufacturer, and priced at €25,000 it’s doubtful that any of them turned a single pedal, never mind climbing an Alpine col.
But it’s not just vanity: bike brands gravitate towards the sports car manufacturers who possess technical know-how and the R&D facilities – and of course the funds – to relentlessly push boundaries. And when they do bring their experience and expertise to the cycling table, the results can become part of cycling legend.
Ernesto Colnago and Enzo Ferrari’s collaboration is the original and best example of this. They first collaborated in 1987 and produced a concept bike made with carbon fibre tubes and lugs, hydraulic brakes and a gearbox transmission rather than derailleur gears. Enzo insisted his new best friend also use three-spoke carbon wheels. Enzo Ferrari died in 1988, but he and the Ferrari engineers, who were not restricted by cycling’s inherited assumptions about materials and mechanisms, had shown Colnago the future. The collaboration continued with the revolutionary carbon monocoque C35, and when Franco Ballerini won Paris-Roubaix in 1995 on a carbon fibre Colnago C40, the association with Ferrari was fully vindicated.
More recently, the meeting of minds between McLaren and Specialized produced the formidable Venge aero bike. McLaren, who this time made the initial approach, brought 30 years of composites experience to the project, backed up with state-of-the-art research facilities and the exacting standards of production demanded by a leading F1 team.
Inevitably there was the same ridicule and scepticism, but those who cast doubt on the Venge were silenced when Matt Goss won the 2011 edition of Milan-Sanremo. There was no better endorsement when Mark Cavendish admitted that he’d miss riding his Venge when the HTC-Highroad team disbanded at the end of the season.
Team Sky’s association with Jaguar evolved into something far more productive than a car sharing scheme, Pinarello working closely with the British company to develop the Dogma F8. And when Pinarello sought to tame the cobbles of Flanders and Roubaix, it was Jaguar’s suspension engineers who provided invaluable input into the development of the Dogma K8-S. In turn, the aerodynamicists at Jaguar’s Warwickshire HQ helped tweak the design of the Bolide HR ridden by Bradley Wiggins to the Hour Record in 2015.
Some cyclists will always view cars as the enemy, shake their heads, gnash their teeth and wring their hands – but sometimes an ignorance of cycling can be an unexpectedly valuable contribution, most memorably when Lotus supplied the revolutionary 108 monocoque bike that Chris Boardman rode to the individual pursuit Olympic gold medal in 1992.
The Lotus Type 108 was conceived by Mike Burrows but fine-tuned by the engineers at Lotus. In his autobiography, Triumphs and Turbulence, Boardman recalls his first meeting with Lotus aerodynamicist Richard Hill: “His sole focus was reducing drag, bending me into shape to make the air flow as smoothly over me as possible. He neither knew nor really cared about what might be comfortable or biomechanically efficient.”
Boardman came to appreciate that Hill’s lack of experience in cycling or bike design could actually be an advantage and could accelerate technical innovation. This approach, paired with the level of wind-tunnel testing and data analysis that Lotus brought to cycling, was unprecedented for the era and, like Colnago’s collaboration with Ferrari, helped to modernise the sport to where we are now.
Which brings us back to Bugatti and Factor. It’s not quite accurate to say that Factor is tapping into automotive technology that doesn’t exist in cycling yet – in some ways it’s the other way round. When we talked to Factor’s chief engineer Graham Shrive before the launch of the Bugatti Factor ONE, Shrive said: “The Bugatti project originally started as an exploration of what would be possible without the usual regulatory constraints. When the Factor ONE was first conceived it was designed with a wider fork in mind. This is what the fork was originally supposed to be like before the UCI stepped in.”
The Bugatti Factor ONE’s fork has an internal width of 127mm – a dimension that exceeds the 115mm that was decreed by cycling’s governing body right in the middle of the ONE’s development. Not only is too wide for UCI racing but it also features F1-inspired ducts to smooth airflow – entirely illegal when things as minor as shaped dustcaps are not allowed.
“When the Bugatti conversation began about a year and a half ago, that gave us permission to do it. Bugatti can make the fastest cars in the world without them fitting into a homologated racing series. The Bugatti Bolide is a track-only, non-road-legal hypercar that delivers incredible performance. Rob [Gitelis Factor’s owner] asked the team, What if we take inspiration from the Bugatti Bolide? What if Factor made a bike with Bugatti that didn’t have to conform to any governing body’s regulations?"
The Factor ONE now has a UCI-legal fork and is being raced by Human Powered Health in the women’s WorldTour, but, Shrive said, “We had already invested a huge amount of time in understanding the wider concept and I wanted to continue doing that. So we started thinking about where it could exist in its purest and highest-performance format as it had originally been intended.”
Factor is perfectly transparent in its marketing of the bike: “The Bugatti Factor ONE is aimed at collectors, enthusiasts, and athletes who seek the rarest expression of performance cycling.”
Cycling traditionally prides itself on simplicity, authenticity, practicality, perhaps even a kind of anti-extravagant asceticism. That’s why expensive, apparently self-indulgent collaborations with car manufacturers will always generate scepticism, ridicule, sometimes hostility.
But it’s always worth remembering that innovation can and does come out of these partnerships: carbon fibre was viewed as exotic and expensive when Colnago and Ferrari introduced it; now it’s ubiquitous and unquestioned. Bringing in new technology via the best engineers has cost money that the cycling industry just didn’t have – as Lotus taking over the Mike Burrows design showed. Yes, they’re vanity projects, but we need them.
