A Capsule in Time: The Wonderful World of Moulton bicycles

As I sit on a slightly rattly, two-carriage train, the steel, glass, and concrete of Bristol quickly give way to brown-green dappled fields, many still flooded from a tremendously wet February. The March sun is doing its level best to burn through the heavy clouds, but it's still a little too anaemic, despite what the daffodils would have you believe. 

I've passed through many postcard-named stations on my way to Bradford on Avon, a stone's throw in relative terms from the Cyclingnews office. Here is where Moulton bikes are still produced, and though you may well have never laid eyes on one either in person or digitally, the brand has a storied history.

I’m met at the station by Steve, the company’s head of sales, armed with two Moultons, and we immediately glide through town and onto the Kennet and Avon canal path. If, in your mind’s eye, you picture ‘English postcard town’ you’ve got a fair idea of what Bradford on Avon and its attendant canal is like; extremely pretty, despite the fact it was, until rather recently, underwater. 

Glide is the operative word, as the Moulton betwixt my legs, is blessed with both front and rear suspension. It’s far more pillowy than similarly travelled modern suspension forks, the likes of which you’d find on a YT Szepter for example. The ride over a rutted canal towpath is slightly lolloping, reminiscent of the train carriage I had only recently alighted. 

They say a picture tells a thousand words (though my editor still refuses to pay a word rate on this basis...), and so below I'll walk through my journey into Moulton's factory, and the endearing history of a cult British cycling brand, in images.

To understand Moulton you need to understand Alex Moulton, the brand’s founder. A designer/engineer worthy of being mentioned amongst other such British designers/engineers like James Dyson, Barnes Wallace, and Colin Chapman. Before turning his hand to bicycle manufacturer, Alex Moulton designed the suspension for the original Mini. This suspension was in effect miniaturised and built into early models, though these had a far more boxy appearance than today at their inception in the ‘60’s. 

Down the line the designs were updated to the space frame models in production to this day; all narrow tubes, trusses, and triangles. The models proliferated from the original, utilitarian around-town models to include ever lighter and more purposeful options, and the eventual introduction of rear suspension, which in conjunction with wider tyres in effect creating the world's first full suspension mountain bike, though it’s a far cry modern mountain bikes and is perhaps more akin to a lightly suspended gravel bike.

Now the factory, as much as a production unit within the grounds of what, by rights, could very well be a National Trust property can be called a ‘factory’, produces models that range from the entry-level TSR, pitched at leisure cyclists and canal towpath botherers, through to the fully stainless NS Double Pylon, where even the head tube and seat tube are trussed space frames rather than whole tubes. 

My entry to the factory was charmingly low-key. Given the fact the factory is within a walled estate I was ushered through a gate in a wall up a side road, which made me feel more like I’d accidentally kicked my ball into a neighbour's garden than a visitor to a production plant. We then rode through the grounds on an entirely moss-covered ribbon of tarmac, rutted by time and corrugated by endless tree roots - certainly a test for the suspension - into the lower half of the estate. Here, a series of low buildings house the offices, paint shop, and factory floor. 

The office, where I’m treated to an instant coffee and an extremely large slice of millionaire shortbread, is brimming with accumulated trinkets, trophies, design snippets, photographs and memorabilia. Frames covers of Japanese GQ lie next to bisected models of pneumatic suspension units, and dominating one wall is a giant monochrome portrait of Alex Moulton himself, flanked on either side by framed photos of Moulton models. 

The British have a wonderful obsession with the success of men in sheds. Passionate, dogged individuals making marvels by the light of oil lamps in cramped spaces that smell of a mix of lubricating oil and an undercurrent of metal and damp. Moulton, I’m very happy to say, fits my expectations. 

While the Colnago paint shop in the outskirts of Pisa felt like going back to the 70’s, if I was told that the men beavering away with files and torches, brass and silver and flux, still operated in imperial measurements and were paid in shillings I’d be at least some way to believing. Only their headphones, cabled units snaking out of boiler suits, nodded to the modern age. 

The brazers all start on racks, where there is a little more margin for error, before graduating to sub-assemblies of entire bicycles. Given the fact the bikes do not use the standard arrangement of head tube, down tube, seat tube etc, Moulton has had to make all its own jigs too, and as such each new model is created ‘in the air’, so to speak, before a jig is designed retrospectively to create subsequent models. In a smaller building - a little uphill next to the paint booth - a new jig is being designed for the new Moulton Safari model.

This British heritage, and slight misty-eyed nostalgia for the good old days, may be waning here, but it’s certainly popular in Asia. Moulton sells very few models domestically, with the overwhelming majority shipping to Asia. I’m told the markets fluctuate, with perhaps Japan dominating for some years before waning, and the slack picked up by Thailand, Indonesia, or Korea. Nations with a far greater love of minivelo, or the small wheeled bicycles than we have here in the UK. 

I have a feeling the success of the brand in Asia is in no small part down to Steve.

He’s clearly a man who has bought into the brand wholeheartedly and clearly loves his trips to visit his dealers in the East. As I mull over the day with a sad meal deal sandwich beneath a columned awning, Steve eats some spicy noodles from a mug. He tells me the lengths he goes to make sure his customers are happy, including flying to Brisbane to rescue a stuck seatpost. 

As he finishes his lunch he tells me that he is so fond of this particular brand of noodles (MAMA, if you’re curious), that he often buys them in bulk in Thailand and uses them as packing material to ship bikes back to the UK. I’m afraid I hadn’t the heart to tell him that I can get the same ones in my local supermarket, especially as I was sent home with a pack by way of a souvenir. 

• Don't miss: Behind the scenes at the Colnago factory

At the top of the estate there are the newer buildings, far more modern affairs with roofs that aren't sagging. Packing, polishing, building, and palletisation for shipping to Asia are all taken care of up here. It feels a world away from the brazing room below, though there are brazing stations up here too where less prestigious models are joined up. 

In the lobby, awaiting a museum at some unspecified point in the future, is an agglomeration of historic models. There are the original shopping bikes through to models used in the Race Across America. Dura Ace downtube shifters mounted to handlebars butt up against rusty Sturmy Archer 3-speed levers.

While often mentioned in the same breath given that both use small wheels and both are packable, the Moulton models aren’t what you’d think of as folding bikes. They are far more akin to a breakaway frame, designed for ease of transport, but not regular disassembly for commuting. Also unlike a Brompton, Moulton bikes can accept standard components. I saw a couple of extremely handsome, highly polished numbers running cable-actuated Campagnolo Super Record. 

Bicycles do tend to reflect their place of manufacturer, in a similar way to the phenomenon of dog owners resembling their pets. So Colnago is prim, fettled, and a little haughty, the Moultons I saw were full of English sensibilities. Nuts and bolts on show, engineering first, looks second; the sort of bike that would marvel at a suspension bridge, and turn its nose up at showy footwear.

Is there anything we've missed? Let us know in the comments below, and stay tuned to Cyclingnews for all the race results, news and features from our team on the ground throughout the classics season.

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