The Worst Bike Ever!!!!!!

 

 

It looks like a bike.

 

 

Look at the far end of the top tube. It's difficult to photograph, but it was brazed to the seat tube squint, then bent to meet the head tube.

The light coloured stuff emerging from the paint is flux, or acid, or something. We don't want to know. Also visible in this picture is the bulge in the tube from where it was bent into shape. In most factories, they don't make things this badly, or if they do it goes in the scrap pile and the worker is told off.

 

 

 

 

The chain wheel has a disk to keep oil off your trousers. It's not been fitted properly. The cut-out recess visible at 11 o'clock should be behind the crank.

Note how far the bottom bracket axle sticks through the crank. Precision engineering or what?

 

 

A poor quality casting.

 

 

 

ugg. If one were a paranoid conspiracy theorist, one might think that this object was produced by a CIA black propoganda operation to besmirch the noble Soviet worker.

 

This is a copy of the Campagnolo Record rear gear mechanism. This picture makes it look better than it is.

 

 

Fluted cranks, solid metal pedals. These will be among the last bits of this bike to fail.

 

 

Cold war nostalgia.

 

 

Same word in two different alphabets.

 

This bike was donated by Mathew Teush. If anyone knows anymore about who imported these bikes, or has ridden one, please email.

 

We did have another of these. We sold it to a bicycle museum in Ibiza. It wasn't quite as bad.

 

If you like Russian things, have a look at EnglishRussia.com.

 

We have had one email on the matter:

 

I've just been looking at that picture on your site, in the Gallery, of what purports to be a Soviet-era Russian bicycle.  It's hard to believe that anything so terrible could have been made even in the USSR.  I've owned Soviet cameras; and, while they lacked the finesse of their German equivalent, they weren't half bad, and the lenses were actually excellent.   I wonder if this is really what you half-suggest - a piece of anti-Soviet propaganda from the days when you couldn't readily travel to Russia, so were prepared to believe everything there was the pits?  There's a bit of a puzzle in the name in both Cyrillic and Roman alphabets on the bicycle frame.  The Russian for "sport" is спорт.  What it says on that bicycle in Cyrillic is "sporm," which doesn't signify anything to me with my limited Russian vocabulary.  I have a feeling this is a piece of CIA black propaganda from the days of the Cold War.  Anyway, nice site and good luck with the project.  As I accumulate more bikes in a small house, I could do with starting something similar here in St. Helens.   Kind regards,   Paul Griffin   Would the CIA really have bothered to make lots of bad bikes as a black propaganda operation? Stranger things have happened. It seems unlikely though. We'll stop worrying about it and get back to our real work of improving people's mental health and making good bikes.