Expensive cycles part of world boom

Press, 7 December 1978, Page 23

Expensive cycles part of world boom

It sits in the garage of a London insurance broker, Robert Graham — chrome gleaming, red cellulose glowing with expensive lustre. It is the year’s newest and most admired status symbol.

It’s a bicycle, Germanbuilt, weighing 201 b, and costing £6OO. “I bought it,” said Robert Graham, ’“because nowadays I cycle almost as far as I drive, and I felt I could justify having the very best.”

As a bicycle boom of un-

PAUL WALLACE

precedented proportions sweeps the world, more and more people are spending on cycles the sort of money they once spent on buying a car. “Once when a man rode

a bike it was assumed that he couldn’t afford anything better,” says a spokesman for the British Cycling Bureau. “Now a hand-made, lightweight, with perhaps

10 speeds, is becoming as big a status symbol as this year’s car or the latest central heating.” The trade agrees. “We’re not just catering for sportsmen any more,” says one craftsman who produces less than 100 machines a year. “Most of our bikes now go to people who have suddenly rediscovered the pleasures of cycling. “Instead of buying a big new car, they’re getting a smaller one and spending