Mike Burrows: 1943–2022
August 18, 2022 8:49 PM   Subscribe

People do not generally become famous for designing bikes, but if anyone ever did, it's Mike Burrows. Always an iconoclast, he contributed important designs and innovations to cycling. He died on August 15 from lung cancer.

Among his designs: The iconic Lotus 108. The Windcheetah. The Giant TCR, the first road bike to use a "compact frameset" with sloping top tube, now used on most production road bikes. He developed the barrel adjuster without which click-shifting would be almost impossible to set up. He convinced another iconoclast, Graeme Obree, to use a single-side fork on his hour-record bike.

An extended interview.
posted by adamrice (16 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
🚲
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:03 PM on August 18, 2022


🚲.
posted by alex_skazat at 9:15 PM on August 18, 2022


. I knew of Obree’s antics but hadn’t head of b
mike burrows. Thanks for sharing.
posted by CostcoCultist at 9:57 PM on August 18, 2022


.
posted by St. Oops at 10:08 PM on August 18, 2022


I half wish his 8 freight cargo bike were available in the US. The unforked wheels make me a little nervous though. Probably super easy to change a flat at least.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:22 AM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by gauche at 3:32 AM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by tommasz at 5:21 AM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by humbug at 6:03 AM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by ghharr at 7:12 AM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by djseafood at 7:20 AM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by introp at 8:09 AM on August 19, 2022


I met Mike when he and his buddy Richard Ballantine were in Vancouver working on human powered land speed bikes.

I was working for bicycling magazines at the time. They invited me up (and paid my way) to spend a great weekend riding experimental bikes.
posted by Repack Rider at 12:14 PM on August 19, 2022 [4 favorites]


.
posted by adekllny at 1:50 PM on August 19, 2022


.
posted by tomsk at 2:07 PM on August 21, 2022


.

Lost one of my idols: not for his technical genius, but for his practical "Let's work out how this aspect of cycling really works, and design from there" approach. He was not afraid of new designs or new materials. He made lots of mistakes, but fewer and fewer as a design progressed.

I first read of his antics in Richard Ballantyne's Bicycle (UK) magazine, where Mike's designs were tearing up the HPV tracks while dedicated weirdos like the late David Wrath-Sharman and the still-extant-but-strange Geoff Apps were doing impeccable things off-road. I suspect Ballantyne could afford to be nice: his father founded Ballantyne Books. Burrows managed to be kind.
posted by scruss at 5:50 PM on August 21, 2022 [1 favorite]


.

I remember he had a regular column in Cycle, the CTC magazine, where he'd inveigh against the lack of innovation in the industry, and how Giant, his employers, would never let him custom make parts, whereas the moped makers would be able to have mopeds made of entirely custom parts. And about how his fondness for cantilevered hubs was so widely criticised by people who were very happy to ride around in cars sitting comfortably on 4 cantilevered hubs.

There were a few bits from the road.cc obituary that really caught:
That brings me to my favourite story about Mike, which he told me himself and involved a test ride on the newest version of his Ratracer recumbent race bike. At one point on his route, Mike drew up alongside a couple of road-bike-riding MAMIL types who had stopped at the kerbside. They marvelled at Mike’s low-slung speed machine and couldn’t believe it when he said he had designed it himself.

“You should have seen the look on their faces when, just as I left, I pointed at their bikes and said, ‘Oh yes, and I designed your bikes, too!’” he chuckled.
and also this one brought a bit of a lump up in my throat
However, his death has reminded me of something he said during that first conversation we had about Richard Ballantine: “The thing about Richard is that he was a very nice man. He was just really nice. Nobody is going to say that about me when I die.”
I love this article by long time UK cycling journalist John Stevenson too, especially this vignette:
Practical bikes like this were a lifelong theme for Burrows who stopped driving after the oil price shock of the early 70s; he had previously raced saloon cars. “In our early years in the late ‘70s, we all had butcher’s trade bikes,” says Andy Pegg. “Mike basically ran his business for 15 years using a trade bike to pedal into the city to pick up bars of steel and things and pedal back again. And I had one as well and I did my window cleaning round for 20 years with a ladder strapped on the side and a bucket in the basket.”
And you'll be pleased to know you're mentioned as one of the heroes he got to meet, Repack Rider:
Burrows was looked up to by a couple of generations of cycling designers and general bike nerds, but he in turn had his own heroes. Travelling around when working for Giant he got to meet OG mountain bikers such as Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly. “He liked them because they’d come up with an idea from just messing around,” says Pegg. “They showed that we don’t all have to be roadies. Let’s go take our old paper boy bikes up a mountain and see what happens.
Anyway, it seems like a life well lived, and I'm really glad to have spent some time enjoying reading about it.
posted by ambrosen at 3:00 PM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]


« Older Stuck in a building with no light and secular...   |   What to Actually Do About an Unequal Partnership Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments