As a complement to the recent episode of BBC’s Repair Shop featuring a Moulton Stowaway bicycle, we have here a short video from the V&A museum looking at the Moulton Stowaway from a design perspective.
Underlining how ground-breaking Moulton’s original design was, this video covers most of the Stowaway’s innovative features. Some of these have become ubiquitous, for example, the easy adjustment of saddle height without the need for tools; others, including the small wheels and full suspension, remain almost as esoteric today as they were back in 1962.
The Moulton bicycle, it should be remembered, was the first of the full-size small-wheeled bicycles. The significance of Moulton’s design is underlined by the fact that by 1970, one-third of bicycles sold in the UK were small-wheelers.
All Moulton Stowaways are rare - almost all of the original ‘F-frame’ 1960s Moulton bicycles were of the fixed-frame (non-separable) type. The numbers of Stowaways have been further reduced by the careless use of the separation mechanism; if ridden with the joint loose, the ends of the main tube would become deformed until a solid joint couldn't be formed. Others suffered from overloading, as the large platform carriers were far too tempting to use to carry friends around on (as so clearly seen on the Repair Shop).
The sample in the care of the Victoria and Albert Museum is, appropriately, in rather better condition.
