The tale of The Electric
The Mark 01 Custom might be our first machine released, but we actually started work on The Electric first. It’s fair to say we’ve got carried away…
Small & perfect(ish)
In 1942 Lt Colonel John Dolphin and Harry Lester were lounging about in the British Secret Service’s engineering factory. “What we need” said John, “is a really, really tiny motorbike we can drop from aeroplanes”. “You’re right damn it” said bike racing engineer Harry, “That’ll show the bloody Jerries what for.”
The results were frankly marvelous. Designed to fit into a canister and be dropped with paratroopers the Welbike was basically completely useless. Tiny wheels and low top speed meant it was probably easier walking. But that didn’t bloody well stop the British army giving it a good bloody go. Legend has it that as one soldier laughed at his chum squeezed into the diminutive frame the poetic refrain “ere, mate, you look like a fucking monkey” could be heard. And so the mighty Monkey Bike was spawned.
As the strategic “need” dwindled the Welbike was thrust unto the eager hands of consumers as the Brockhouse Corgi. A machine perfect for all occasions. But for some reason consumers were too stupid to realise they needed one as 7 years later production stopped. Disaster.
Meanwhile across the pond the USSR and the USA started a space race.
NASA’s Big Mistake
Deep in the 1960s battle for orbital mastery, Nasa’s Spacecraft Design Division started drawing up plans to solve one of the unexplained mysteries of space travel – that Astronauts hate walking.
They called in lightweight companies like Boeing, GM and Lockheed to rub their pencils together in search of a solution. NASA soon realised these plonkers were designing something huge and with 4 wheels, so the boffins at SDD set to designing something far better – the Moon-cycle
By slapping in 0.6 hp of electrical muscle into a tiny frame they dreamed of 6 or 7 mph. They squeezed in 2kg of beeswax to dissipate heat from the battery in the absence of an atmosphere and modified the controls to compensate for Astronauts’ curiously large hands. When they tested it on simulated Lunar surfaces at ⅙ g it turned out to be the best extraterrestrial vehicle that would never be built.
Presumably by mistake someone slipped in NASA’s rubber stamp department and the Lunar Rover got the green light. The Solar System was denied the Moon-cycle and NASA had to redesign the Lunar lander to fit a car. More disaster.
2 wrongs make a right
These two tragedies in the history of transport are the pillars upon which the Venturo E’s design criteria have been writ.
But we’re not re-mangling the past. We’re taking the great works of Colonel Dolphin, Harry and NASA and building on top of them to create a 2 wheeled future-cycle. The ultimate electric adventure machine.
A bike that will be as happy bouncing over the Sea of Tranquility as it will tearing the Himalayas a new one or shopping for Granny’s contact lens solution. The batman’s utility belt of movement machines. This then is the final chapter in humanity’s tale of the wheel. What cave-non-gender-specifieds started will finish with the Venturo E.
So with this underplayed mantra rumbling around our minds, we got fettling.
Bhutan – Special Edition
Holy phallus, we’ve only gone and opened up a never before ridden part of the mystical Mountain Kingdom itself to test and launch the first ever edition of The Electric – The Bhutan.
Inspired by and designed to takle this most ridiculous of journeys we felt this would be a fitting birth for such a capable adventure machine.
With thanks to His Most Excellent Royal Prince and in cahoots with our sister company The Adventurists we’re releasing the first batch of Special Edition Electrics from a place so remote it has never been crossed by vehicle.