Originally Posted by
Pahana
...the Moulton seems over rated for my taste.
Okay.
It just seems to my view that Alex Moulton had some great ideas about bikes but went over board on the engineering. Alex Moulton's ideas could have been implemented in a simpler form at a lower price as far as I can see. The earlier frames seem to hold to his thinking and without the elitist form the bikes now have.
In the early 1960s Dr. Moulton tried to sell/license his design to large bike companies and they turned him down. He went into the bicycle manufacturing business in 1962 and his bikes became popular in the UK mass-market of the day. The big British bike companies (chiefly Raleigh) introduced vastly inferior models with big advertising campaigns and strong-armed their dealers to drop Moulton as a secondary line. Moulton's sales dropped, his bike manufacturing efforts began to lose money and he sold out to Raleigh in 1967, ending just four and a half years of independent cycle manufacture. Raleigh, in the great spirit of 'not invented here', ended all promotion, tapered down Moulton-design bike production over the next couple of years, then dropped the bikes entirely in 1974. You can read about this in 'The Moulton bicycle' by Tony Hadland.
Dr. Moulton spent the next several years advancing his ideas, designing around his old patents and went into the bespoke built bike business - your 'overboard' bikes. This 'elite' effort is approaching its 40th anniversary and business is quite healthy, thank you. You can read about this in 'The Spaceframe Moultons', also by Mr. Hadland.