RTA plywood bike - how cool is that?
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“So dumb. Wonder if Nicholas has an engineering degree?”

“Imagine riding that ‘bike’ down a serious hill at 30-40 mph…”

“One of the many designs that are just pure fantasy. It boggles my mind that stuff like this wins awards … We could make a flatpack bike, but not out of plywood.”

They say everybody’s a critic. Certainly these commentators on treehugger.com are. The object of their collective wrath is an award-winning plywood flatback bike, plus its little brother scooter, designed by Nicolas Belly, a student in Bordeaux, France. The coolest feature is that all the of the parts, including the wheels of each transport device, are nested from a sheet of plywood and designed for quick assembly.

Belly’s creative entry won second place in L’argus design competition under the title, “Less is more: traveling in the era of simplicity.” The basic concept of the L’argus contest is for college-level European design students to invent a vehicle that is useful to society.

I don’t imagine that I would actually want to ride one of Belly’s contraptions. But it would look wicked cool on the wall of my man cave.

Learn more.

Oh, and here's a completely different opinion of Belly's designs.

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