This $3,300 Wooden Bike Will Set Your Cash on Fire

They say you write what you know. Sometimes, that holds true for design, too. Thierry Boltz and Claude Saos are industrial designers, sure, but they’re also helpless, all-consumed bike nuts, and when they set out to build a two-wheeler of their own, they had one main aim: to make something that they’d personally love to ride. What they ended up with is the WOOD.b, a bike which combines a handsome wooden frame with standard steel components. Basically, this is the bike that will make the guy who thought he had the nicest bike on the block do a double take and crash into a trash can.

Boltz and Saos hail from Strasbourg, a French town with a unique city center that deliberately filters out cars to make room for pedestrians and bikers. In other words, the region’s love of bicycles doesn’t just shape its citizens’ habits–it dictates urban planning, too. After founding BSG Bikes last year, the designers were set on making a bike using the materials they loved: wood, steel, leather. But they also wanted to do something different from what was already out there.



The main challenge, Saos explains, was coming up with a system that safely and effectively joined the wood frame and the steel parts. They wanted to give owners the chance to use standard components, and to let them seek repairs at their local bike shops when needed–something, Saos says, that “is not the case for most wooden bikes.” The final look was inspired by Scandinavian furniture and Italian cars from the ’30s and ’40s. “I think that WOOD.b reflects both of these influences well,” Saos says–a fine ID humblebrag.

When available next month, each WOOD.b will be custom-made for its owner. You’ll be able to pick from over a half dozen types of wood for the frame, including ash, beech, mahogany and rosewood, and from a selection of 18 different colors for the steel bits. Alas, the good looks don’t come cheap. The kit that includes the frame, the seat post, the stem and headrest starts at 2,500 euros, or around $3,300.

About the price, the designers point out that some people can’t resist splurging on beautiful car. For them, it’s the same thing, just with two wheels and a handlebar. And while the appeal of the WOOD.b might have to do with its “incredible vintage look,” in Saos’s words, or “the feeling of riding and incredible object,” it also has to do, he says, with the simple fact that you’ve “never seen another bike like this one.”

Source: http://tinyurl.com/mgufekj