Fastest Bike: M5 Recumbent

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Fastest Bike: M5 Recumbent IEEE Spectrum

Susan Hassler: You might think the world’s fastest bike is the kind of sleek carbon-fiber road machine that wins pro bike races like the Tour de France. In fact, it’s a two-wheeled recumbent bike called the M5. Despite its world-record pedigree, it’s a bike anyone can ride, as Harry Goldstein found out for himself.

Harry Goldstein: I’m at Amsterdam’s Centraal Train Station on my way to Middelburg to see the world’s fastest bicycle, the M5 recumbent designed by world-record holder Bram Moens. I’m surrounded by hundreds of Dutch bikes, most of them black, heavy, and made of steel, none of which could ever hit the 56 miles an hour that Moens can sustain on his bike. The carbon-fiber M5 racer looks like [a] big black missile when it’s enclosed in the aerodynamic capsule, called a fairing, which Moens also designed and built.

Harry Goldstein: It’s a two-and-a-half-hour train ride to Middelburg. Moens greets me at his shop with a demitasse of hot espresso, eager to show his bikes.

Moens and his friends are hanging out here on a Saturday morning to talk about and ride his unique bikes. We’re surrounded by various models of the M5, including low racers and high racers that have set records for the longest distance achieved in an hour, the fastest 100 kilometers, and the fastest 1000 kilometers.

Bram Moens: Normally you should expect that world hour record bike can only be used on the track or whatever, but the funny thing about this is that you can also use it as a commuter bike or shopping bike or whatever, vacation.

Harry Goldstein: And the body of this bike is…?

Bram Moens: Yeah, that’s full carbon fiber, and this is, for me, it was the first bike in carbon which was made directly out of the computer without making any one-to-one scale models. A friend of mine...

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