Description

In A to B 31:

• The Trial: Giant Lafree Comfort
  (A to B APPROVED)
  If we like bikes, we sometimes buy them from the manufacturer. We liked this new top-of-the-range Giant Lafree so much we bought it, and kept it… and kept it. Infact, we only swapped it for a ‘lucky-find’ 2002 £100 zero-mileage Lafree in February 2022, twenty years later. A wonderful machine, and if you can find one, still very much worth buying. Why pay £3,000 for something very similar?
• The Trial: Dahon Helios
  (A to B APPROVED)
  We described the Helios (badge-engineered as a Ridgeback Helios) as the best Dahon to date, and it was. Nothing was outstanding, but it was reasonably light, with a good (derailleur) gear-range, reasonably quick to fold, and all for 500 quid. As with the Lafree, a classic folding bike if you can find one today.
  
  
• The Trial: Powabyke Commuter
  (A to B APPROVED)
  The Commuter weighed 41kg, which was illegally heavy, and it wasn’t particularly cheap either, but we got 33 miles out of it, which was very good in 2002, replacement batteries were cheap and you could nip along deceptively quickly.
• The Trial: PBW Treckking/Rohloff
  (A to B APPROVED)

August 2002. What a bunch of great bikes: four major tests of electric and folding bikes, plus a powered micro-scooter, and yet more on Brompton gearing.

DAVID HENSHAW

1.7 Mb PDF