Sometimes, you see an image and that image is all you need to become fascinated. I know we say not to judge books by their covers, but damn, a good cover can do wonders. Don’t underestimate the power of images! In this particular case, it’s really two images: one of a bicycle with a cartoonishly-huge 130-tooth sprocket, and another of that same bicycle being ridden behind, of all cars, a gull-wing Mercedes-Benz 300SL. I had to know just what the hell this was all about.
This pair of striking images were and are all about one man, José Meiffret, and his dream to pedal a bicycle really, really fast. I’m happy to say Meiffret realized that dream in 1962 on a stretch of autobahn, drafting behind that gull-wing Benz with a tent attached to its rear, where he managed to set a bicycle speed world record of a staggering 127 mph.
Holy crap, right? That is astounding. And, as you can imagine, wildly, dizzyingly dangerous. The method used here, called motor-pacing, where a cyclist uses a motor vehicle in front to break through the wind and set the pace, is absolutely jam-packed with dangers. Get too close, contact any part of that car in front of you, and you’re likely to get knocked off balance and crash, painfully and very likely, lethally. Fall too far behind and the air turbulence will fling you around like a ragdoll until you crash, with the same combination of pain and likely lethality. This is all no joke.
But let’s look into this all a bit more, especially the pictures that caught my attention! Like the astounding bicycle used:
It looks like a joke, some kind of physics cartoon you’d see in a textbook where you’re first learning about gear ratios. But it’s no joke, it’s 130 teeth chained to a 15 tooth rear sprocket, giving a gear ratio of 0.115385:1. So that means, what, for every revolution of that huge pedal sprocket, the rear wheel is spinning 8.67 times.
I also like how the sprocket has “MEIFFRET” machined into it, just in case you thought maybe this was some sort of off-the-shelf accessory you could add to your personal bike.
That bike also has some other interesting alterations to meet the demands of such high speeds: the front fork is reversed, for reasons related to how caster wheels work, which I just recently learned about while writing about monowheel trailers. I believe the reversal was done to reduce the amount of “swivel lead” which can lead to “caster flutter” – the phenomenon you may have encountered with wobbly shopping cart wheels, a situation which could be deadly at high speeds on a bike.
The wheel’s rims were made of, surprisingly, wood, which helped prevent overheating. [Ed note: If you’re thinking, “But aluminum rims would dissipate heat better than wood,” you are correct. I suspect the overheating in question refers to the glue that holds the tires onto the rims. Where an aluminum rim would transfer braking heat to the glue and soften it, possibly resulting in a tire coming off, the wooden rims insulated the glue from braking heat. – Pete] The frame was reinforced at crucial points, and the entire bicycle weighed 45 pounds. But that’s only half the story here; the other remarkable part was the car chosen for him to ride behind, the Mercedes-Benz 300SL:
I’m used to seeing these gullwings almost exclusively as reverential objects of beauty at car shows or sometimes being carefully paraded around a track; the idea of strapping some tent-like contraption to the back of a gullwing feels deliciously subversive. I love it.
I’m not entirely clear exactly what is going on in the back of that thing, either: it sort of looks like a fridge, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s in there. There is a roller at the base, I believe to prevent the wheel from stopping should contact be made, but after a point, it’s still dangerous to make any kind of contact.
As Clifford Graves wrote in his 1965 article for American Bicycling magazine, describing Meiffret’s run after a motorcycle was used to help him get the impossibly-geared bicycle going (!), the many, many dangers of such an undertaking are made clear:
Swiftly, the bizarre combination of man and machine gathered speed. Meiffret’s job on penalty of death was to stay glued to his windscreen. The screen had a roller, but if he should touch it at 100 miles an hour, he would be clipped. On the other hand, if he should fall behind as little as 18 inches, the turbulence would make mincemeat of him. If the car should jerk or lurch or hit a bump, he would be in immediate mortal danger. An engineer had warned him that at these speeds, the centrifugal force might cause his flimsy wheels to collapse. Undismayed by the prospect, Meiffret bent down to his task.
Holy crap. There’s videos of the record run, but before we look at that, it’s maybe worth looking at an earlier attempt from 1952 with an open-wheel race car setting the pace that ended in near-disaster:
Ouch. Incredibly, Meiffret was undaunted, and kept at it, culminating in his record run:
There must have been mountings for cameras on that rig to get the footage seen there; also, was this some sort of speaking tube?
I haven’t seen an explanation for that, so I’m just going to believe that was how they communicated with José back there, pedaling like a madman.
When it came to accepting the danger, Meiffret seemed to accept the risks with a calm resignation. He carried a note with him as he rode, which read
“In case of fatal accident, I beg of the spectators not to feel sorry for me. I am a poor man, an orphan since the age of eleven, and I have suffered much. Death holds no terror for me. This record attempt is my way of expressing myself. If the doctors can do no more for me, please bury me by the side of the road where I have fallen.”
Wow. I kind of want to give this fella a hug now.
But, it’s worth noting, José isn’t buried on the side of the autobahn, because he pulled off his record attempt, reaching a shocking speed of 127.342 mph. The record has since been broken, with the latest motor-paced record set in 2019 at a shocking speed of 174.34 mph.
But if we look at that run, with its specialized bike and a Porsche Cayanne pace car:
… it just doesn’t even look a tenth as cool as Meiffret setup, even if it is faster. In this case, I’m going for style over speed.
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I don’t know why but this sort of world record in particular really bothers me.
Did the rider physically cover ground at 127mph? Yes and that’s amazing.
But the fact that they had to do it behind a moving windbreaker is cheating. No human can do that. Why not just let him ride full out with hurricane force winds at his back. What would the difference be?
I don’t want to take away the cyclist being very fit or a lot of technology being developed or the fact the cyclist is willing to mount a 127mph bike where a crash is almost certainly fatal.
It just doesn’t seem like a clean world record…
There’s a separate record for an unaided cyclist
Wonderful! Both the bike and the car.
And just the most previous century attitude to rust reverse the front fork!
Reminds me of this sweet old movie, I just got to on my 200+ watch list recently, where our protagonist also does some motor pacing behind a truck on the freeway:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078902/?ref_=rt_t_7
Hell yeah. Breaking Away is a true classic in the underserved Cycling Dramedy genre.
This is excellent content, I wish we’d see more stuff about vintage road bicycles. Slightly off-topic, but in recent times I’ve come to realize how much a vintage road bike can be an amazing companion to your classic car for lots of purposes (also applies to virtually any bicycle and whatever your daily driver is; theres all sorts of bike racks out there).
Ever since getting a 1978 Gitane Nation road bike and a hatch-mounted bike rack for the Renault 4, it’s proved very useful in very different settings: I can travel to another city, park on the outskirts, and bike my way through those final miles; I can take the bicyle on road trips/vacations and 1. expand mobility 2. save on gas 3. exercise. I can even commute a little bit in my hometown, although it’s not at all a bike-friendly town – lots of hills to and from everywhere; even e-bikes tend to not be an ideal solution as they simply can’t handle daily use around these parts, and inevitably suffer from damaged cells/drivetrain. But I can drive a couple miles to the outskirts and ride dozens of miles of really nice, flat countryside roads from there. Could not recommend it enough.
I’ve really enjoyed pulling out and restoring my old 70s Motobecane road bike for riding this past year. I love a good retro thing and for as compromised as it is compared to a modern bike, it was far cheaper and I’m not out to win any races so the performance matters less for me.
That was precisely my rationale when I decided to get serious about buying a vintage road bike, after years of lusting after them and watching inflation hit the market. A few years back I almost pulled the trigger on a vintage, mint condition Peugeot with an asking price of €80 negotiable; the same model now goes for €300+; got my Gitane for €220, also in mint condition and with brand new tires, not the worst deal ever since similar ones are also breaking €300. I don’t need the performance; I need to enjoy riding, looking at it, and to be able to fix/maintain it with my own hands. I was happy that I waited a little longer though, as I had no idea Gitane used to be owned by Renault back when I first started looking at vintage road bikes. It pairs with the Quatrelle a lot nicer than any Peugeot bicycle would 🙂
The current motorpace record actually predates—and considerably exceeds—the one in the linked article (which I believe is the UK record). It was set by Denise Mueller-Koronek in 2018 and is 183.932 mph.
Yup, and her record-run rig looks way cooler.
That car seems like massive overkill, but yeah I guess it looks a lot cooler.
And now it the time on Sprockets when we do a happy dance.
Vould you like to touch my monkey?
TOUCH MY MONKEY!!!
i’m astounded by some of the historical bike nerdery in the comments (but not surprised)
I cannot even imagine how hard it was to get that bike rolling. pi x D is pretty big.
A high school classmate of mine and the guy we shared a’ 73 two-speed automatic Toyota Corolla in Driver’s Ed, (along with our European Civilization teacher, and also the girl’s basketball coach <RIP Mr. Curry>, whose daughter went on to be an early WNBA star), rode a Penny Farthing on a Double Century bike ride on a course that required me to downshift my Datsun 510 into second gear to crest some hills.
For every cycle of his pedals, he was going nearly six feet. Also RIP, Mark McGahan, who died crashing his dad’s Goldwing 1500.
Sorry for the convoluted sentence punctuation and syntax.
Oh so this is why the red bull team did this with the guy on ice skates, now I get it kinda.
I’m thinking the attached song needs to be redone w/ the two above!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7hch0wQD1w
Fascinating read with great pics & videos! José Meiffret deserves greater recognition; he’s all too little known today, alas.
“The record has since been broken, with the latest motor-paced record set in 2019 at a shocking speed of 174.34 mph.”
Uh, a 45-year-old American, Denise Mueller-Korenek, actually set the record in 2018 with a speed of 183.9 mph behind a dragster driven by seven-time Pirelli World Challenge winner Shea Holbrook: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5r3MfheBDhwGWfdybkp34m-1000-80.jpg.webp
More details here: https://www.bicycling.com/news/a23281242/denise-mueller-korenek-breaks-bicycle-speed-record/
Incidentally, Allan Abbott was the first to break José Meiffret’s record, in 1973, by going about 139 mph behind a 1955 Chevy hot rod.
So, yeah, neither the dragster nor the ’55 Chevy hold a candle to the gull-wing Mercedes 300SL for utter coolness.
The big breakthrough came from getting a spacely sprocket to mesh with a cogswell cog.
“JetssooOOOONNN!”
You’rrrrrrreeeee FIRED!
There’s our solution for convincing people to ride their bicycle to work more.
Also helping is the fact that Meiffret had a smaller wheel on the front, so he was going downhill the whole time.
Haaa!!
Seems to me that they should have done the run with the doors of the Gull-wing open.
Then they’d really be flying….
The “reverse” fork is to increase the trail. The further behind the steering axis the contact patch is the more the wheel will resist turning, especially at speed. The tradeoff is that turning the bike with such an extreme amount of trail means that the contact patch moves forward by quite a bit, making the entire front of the bike dip. But turning clearly isn’t part of the plans here. If you take a bike like this and give it a good push it will track pretty much perfectly straight until it falls over all on its own.
The roller is a standard item anytime when motorpacing. It would be disaster to hit it at speed the top speeds here, but i’ve sat with my front wheel more or less on the roller behind a motorcycle up to around 55mph and it’s fine.
For the longest of times (and still to some extent) top cyclists were desperately escaping hard lives. Lots of implications… and probably not all of interest on a car site.
I’m pretty sure the fork was reversed to allow the rider’s body to draft closer to the car. You can see the fairing for the Mercedes was flat in the back unlike most of the later speed record attempts where the fairing surrounds and shields the rider better from the wind. Similarly, team time trial track bikes don’t have reversed forks but are usually designed with a short wheelbase so riders can draft closer to one another.
Nope, it’s definitely about adding stability at speed through increasing trail. Very early on the french bike makers knew about the relationship between front wheel trail, wheel flop (why early porteur/randoee bikes had low trail designs). Also the fork isn’t technically reversed… the blades have been given a rear bend (the bike maker would have had forms to do this themselves–the fork blade tubes would not have come formed from the tubing manufacturer) and may have been special ordered in longer lengths, or possibly just uncut. Because the wheel needed to be smaller (due to frame clearance and possibly toe-overlap) the crown to hub distance needs to be longer.
Track bikes all have a shorter wheelbase due to centering the rider’s weight and getting the right “front-center” measurement. Aerodynamics and power delivery are improved getting the hips forward and more above the BB (note the rigid support on M. Meiffret’s bike for the front of the saddle). That’s going to pull the rear wheel in tighter, and correspondingly, the front wheel comes back a bit (also, track bikes have higher trail, but obviously not as extreme as this). Most national teams who have fancy bike setups use the same frame for all events, from match sprint to madison to team time trial and just swap bars and wheels (like team GB, where Lotus have been off and on involved over the years (hey! maybe there should be a Lotus bikes article, with Boardman’s famous bike, the kind of silly looking current design… ) .)
You can get more trail by using a slacker head angle, which is how the subsequent motorpaced record bikes are like. And you only need so much trail, this is excessive. This bike, like the previous Karl-Heinz Kramer bike, was done to draft closer.
I’ve read explicitly by the designers of some national team track bikes with features like curved (or even split seat tubes with the rear tire poking through) to get shorter chainstays that they designed that way for team time trial so the following riders could draft closer. By the more era of bikes you are talking about, that was already assumed to be necessary, so they don’t mention it.
I’d say that you’re both right. As noted below, the geo of this rig seems to be closely related to stayer rigs. There is absolutely an increase in stability, but that is shared with the the decreased wheelbase and smaller front wheel intended to tuck the bike in as closely as possible to the vehicle providing the draft.
I’d guess that as they adopted the smaller wheel, the rake/trail got so far out of whack that the backwards fork as a quick solution (which also aided in shortening front-center and getting the bike/rider further into the draft)
Two things. Pete is mostly correct in that aluminum rim can get hot enough to rip-off tubular. He was probably running silk tubulars as well, those always could rip pretty easily. Secondary gain would the rim absorbing bumps significantly better. Those old aluminum box sections were real stiff for being so narrow.
Second, motor pacing surprising not that dangerous. Back when I was fast and did races that mattered. Getting dropped from the peloton or it my job was to get bottles or something. I’d surf rear bumpers of team cars all the way back up. Sometimes you would give the car a little touch. All the team cars rear bumpers are covered in rubber from love taps. Obviously don’t want to ram into or anything. If you’re going basically the same speed, it just jerks you a bit. If you ever wondered why they don’t show the back of bike races, often when nature calls. You slot behind the tallest team car, your teammate gives you a little push. And you whip it out, and drain the pipe at 30 mph. Totally safe!
Wooden rims predated aluminum (and steel) rims. Lightweight wooden rims were used on the track into the 1950s. I vaguely remember still seeing them in catalogs in the ’80s though probably more for restoration rather than riding. They were eventually banned from racing because when they broke, they could spear people. No one is going to be braking hard on a speed record bike.
Yeah, motor pacing on the street isn’t that dangerous. I used to sometimes discreetly catch drafts behind buses, but always near the edge, on alert, and always leaving a safe out to bail around when there was braking ahead.
Jose: “Eat my (bike) shorts, Eddy Merckx!”
“ Get to close,”
May want to check your to/too/two choice there
oops. I changed it to “teaux.”
Those are called stayer bikes. The reverse fork and tiny front wheel let the rider get right up on the motorpacer and bask (and hopefully get sucked into and stay) in that sweet sweet slipstream glory. Motorpaced racing was definitely a thing in earlyish cycling.
Yes, this has parts from a stayer bike, but those races are on the track and wouldn’t have provisions for brakes. And it still is a thing! There is a whole European circuit and is often featured during 6-day races.
Yeah, nah, 174mph guy is wearing far too much PPE. Meifret managed with just a hat and some gym clothes. Absolutely fucking nails.
Right up there with Burt Munro.
The World’s Fastest Indian
Good Movie