My word, we’ve been doing this a long time. Trawl back through the archives, and you’ll find a Frog test in October 2002, when Alexander’s Like-a-Bike was getting under the feet of security guards at the London Cycle Show. He’s now riding full-size bikes.
Riese & Müller is a German company, set up by young engineers Heiko Müller and Markus Riese in 1993, initially selling earmuffs, but moving on to bigger things. Like so many others, the pair set out on the road to folding bike nirvana, designing a neat folder with 18inch wheels called the Birdy. It was a rideable and rather clever machine, but like everything designed since the 1980s it came head to head with the Brompton and suffered accordingly. Built by Pacific in Taiwan, the Birdy proved a hit in its home German market and in the Far East, where it was marketed as the BD1, but less successful elsewhere.
R&M went on to design and market a number of innovative bicycles, and in 2002, very much to our surprise, the company launched a more compact folder called the Frog. It was a clever little bike, but expensive, and it wasn’t immediately obvious how it would attract sales from the bigger and more capable Brompton. It seems not to have done, because by 2006 it had been quietly deleted, but R&M continued to get requests from caravanners and other leisure types, for whom the longer-legged Birdy was altogether too big and unwieldy. As a result, the Frog was revised and reintroduced from December 2009.We’re taking a look at this interesting new machine.
The Frog
Compared to its predecessor from eight years ago, the Frog has changed almost out of recognition. The basic geometry is much the same, but like the Birdy, the frame is now made of hydroformed alloy tubing, rather than round and square tubes. The curvaceous tubes work well with the colour options of black or magenta; a shocking pink, guaranteed to draw a crowd.
Equipment-wise, the most important change is from 121/2-inch to 16-inch wheels. Back in 2002, we thought the 121/2-inch wheels worked surprisingly well considering their diminutive size, but in the real life cityscape of pot-holes and awkward kerbs, regular commuting would have been a nerve-wracking affair.
Most manufacturers seem to agree that the smallest useful wheel size is 305mm (16inch), and R&M have gone down this road, matching the wheels to ultra-wide 50x305mm Schwalbe Big Apple tyres. The Big Apple is a strange tyre. It looks heavy and sluggish, but in reality it’s quite the opposite, and in the bigger sizes at least, it offers very low rolling resistance. With such a massive cross-section, the tyres also offer a degree of suspension, making them an odd choice for the Frog, which has Birdy-style suspension – a leading link and polymer/coil spring on the front and swing-arm and polymer block at the rear. Still, with little wheels, you really do need all the suspension you can get, and compared to most 16-inch folders, the Frog has a real Rolls-Royce feel on ordinary roads. Jolly good. Oddly though, it’s not as proficient at climbing kerbs as we expected it to be. Hit a kerb too hard and the front wheel will bounce into the air. This is partly down to the short 87cm wheelbase, which also tends to encourage wheelies in the lower gears.
At 14.1mph, the roll-down speed was a bit lower than we expected (for comparison, think 15mph for a good Brompton or Birdy and 13mph for a tacky Taiwanese smallwheeler). Riding our ten-mile ‘commuter’ route gave a similar result: the time of 441/2 minutes put the Frog behind the Brompton, Birdy, new Mezzo D9 and 20-inch Dahons, but ahead of the Strida, the early Mezzo, and innumerable wierd and whacky machines, such as the ‘A’ bike. Not very impressive, although the sluggish performance might have as much to do with ‘stiction’ in the 8-speed Nexus hub as anything else. As delivered, the resistance in the hub was very noticable, but after running in for a few miles, it reached an acceptable level, although still much higher than one would expect from a typical hub gear.
When we tested the Frog in 2002, it was fitted with a light, simple 3-speed Nexus hub, although the rather low gear ratios of 35″, 48″ and 65″ were barely adequate for town use. Today’s 8-speed Frog has a more or less ideal spread, from a wheel lifting 27.4 inches to a reasonable, but not super-high 84 inches. That’s on paper. In practice, the resistance in the hub, and a rather tight chain tensioner, makes the gears feel somewhat higher than they are.You don’t really notice this until you come up against a Birdy or a Brompton (The Riese & Müller engineers will be tut-tutting into their morning coffees at this point), but in practice a Brompton with three gears can do much the same things as a Frog with eight, because the drive train (principally tyres and rear hub) runs so much more freely. If the Frog is being aimed primarily at the leisure market, we’d suggest a lighter, cheaper 3-speed option like the previous model.
In all other respects, the Frog goes and stops well. The powerful V-brakes are connected left lever to the front, right to rear, Euro style, so British riders have to take some care, especially as the bike has such a short wheelbase.You might get used to this, but lend the Frog to an unsuspecting friend, and they’ll be sailing over the bars the first time an old lady in a Ford Fiesta pulls out in front of them. The brake cables can be swapped, but we hear this leaves things rather untidy at the front. We didn’t try it.
Handling feels slightly odd at first, mainly because of the strange handlebar geometry, which looks (and feels) similar to the old Cresswell/Pashley Micro.That’s not really a criticism though.The suspension and geometry of the bike give a surprisingly stable, trusty feel – a real improvement over the twitchy, wayward handling of that original 121/2-inch bike.
Fit & Folding
The real strength of the Frog is its adjustability. The handlebars can be locked at five heights between 94cm and 102cm above the ground. The saddle has an even broader range of 63cm to 103cm, so you can more or less assume that anyone can ride the same bike after a momentary adjustment.
The folding process is similar to that of the Birdy, but without the latter’s derailleur gears, it’s an easier, more repeatable process because you don’t need to get the bike in the right gear to avoid a greasy chain incident. The only preparation, as with the Brompton, is to get the pedals in roughly the right position. Then the front wheel can be released from its suspension spring by pressing a little locking lever, and with the front of the bike held up, the front wheel can be rotated back to lock into a folded position. If the pedal is still where you left it (probably not), you can release the rear frame lock, allowing the rear frame, wheel and rack to swing forward in an asymmetrical manner – in other words, the hinge is offset, so that as the wheel goes forwards it ends up to the left of the front wheel. After a brief tussle, the front wheel settles against the rear wheel, allowing the main seat post to slide down, locking everything in place. The handlebars have their own quick-release, and fold down to the left against the rear wheel, while the telescopic seat pillar only needs to be dropped if space is an issue.
No, it’s not Brompton convenient, Brompton quick, or Brompton balletic come to that, but the steps are easy to remember, and a piece of cake after a bit of practice. The chain looks untidy, but it’s safely sandwiched between the wheels, and the only potential for grub is from grasping that front wheel early on. Fine if you keep your bicycles in as-new condition, but fury invoking of you’re folding the bike on the steps of the office just before a crucial meeting. Compared to the Birdy though, it’s a much easier, cleaner operation.
Folded size contains good and bad elements. The package looks lower than a Brompton, but at 60 centimetres tall, it’s actually the same height. It’s bigger in other dimensions too: 36cm wide (Brompton 28cm), and 84cm long (Brompton 60cm).You can reduce the length to 71cm by putting the saddle right down and turning it sideways, and in this slightly amended form, the bike has a volume of 153 litres or 5.5 cubic feet. That compares well to the 18-inch Birdy (7.4 cubic feet), but less well to the Brompton, which on a fairly conservative fold (ie, you can make it smaller on a good day) takes up only 3.6 cubic feet. Incidentally, the original Frog occupied 3.5 cubic feet, the difference being down to the significantly taller and wider wheels on the 2010 version. So the Frog isn’t quite as pace-setter as it once was, but it still gets into the exclusive super compact club.
Once folded, the bike has Brompton-style rollers on its rear rack, so it can be pulled around by the saddle with reasonable ease. The only problem is a distinct tendency to fall over to the left, which is odd, because most of the weight seems to be on the right. You soon remember to lean it up against something, and it’s not the only folder with this tendency, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless.
If it does happen to fall on you, you’ll be rubbing your leg for some time. Our test Frog weighed no less than 12.9kg (28lb), 2.5kg heavier than its predecessor. Mind you, the original Frog was little more than a frame and wheels, and our new bike has the optional propstand (waste of time), rear rack (useful), and mudguards (depends where you live). That sort of weight would be typical of a steel Brompton with all the extras, but it’s two or three kilograms heavier than the titanium jobs. And at £1,295 against £1,125 for a typical superlight Brompton, the Frog will inevitably be compared to the titanium machines.
Although longer than the Brompton, the Frog is one of the select group of bikes that fit between typical train seat backs
Conclusion
Back in 2002 we concluded that the Frog wasn’t a very practical machine, which it wasn’t, but that funloving types might be willing to part with £720 for one – a lot of money at the time. The 2010 model is a lot more practical, but it’s also a lot bigger, somewhat heavier and considerably more expensive.
Nevertheless, it’s still a fun machine. Everyone from old ladies, a group of passing soldiers, even kids on the local BMX track, says much the same thing: ‘cool bike’. And they really mean it. This bicycle exudes cool from every pore. To sum up, we can’t do better (which is a bit sad) than to slightly paraphrase our 2002 conclusion: ‘The Frog has fun in abundance, and if you still think it’s funny after parting with £1,295, it’s definitely the bicycle for you.’
Specification
Riese & Müller Frog £1,295 .Weight (with accessories) 12.9kg (28lb) . Gears Nexus 8-spd hub Ratios 27”, 34”, 39”, 44”, 52”, 64”, 74”, 84” . Tyres Schwalbe Big Apple 50x305mm Folded Dimensions W36cm H60cm L71cm . Folded Volume 153 litres (5.5 cubic feet) Wheelbase 87cm . Manufacturer Riese & Müller T +49 6151 366 860
A to B 77 – Apr 2010
