Eurobike show: The novel, the quirky & the downright daft

Eurobike demo day gives us a chance to sling a leg over some of the new bikes we’ve been telling you about over the last few months,  and some that we’ve never set eyes on before. It’s also a chance to get a glimpse of some of the more esoteric and downright odd stuff that Eurobike is chock full of. Here are some of the things that we saw.

This Bygen beam bike is a mad thing indeed. It’s based around a beam mechanism that can slide fore and aft so the bike will fold up and fit in the boot of your car. Plus you can alter the top tube length for a good fit. We suppose.

The most extraordinary feature of the Bygen is the pedal mechanism, which places the pedals where you’d normally expect to find them but instead of a chain they’re attached by a linkage directly to the rear hub, which has internal gears. It all looks a bit Heath-Robinson, but people were riding them around and they didn’t seem to be breaking. It weighs about 10kg and will set you back a salty $5,000.

On to a much classier looking machine: the Faraday Porteur. Faraday are a California-based bike builder and this is their first bike. It’s electric, with a motor in the front wheel and the battery concealed in the down tube. The brains are contained in an aluminium unit at the rear that also serves as rear light. There’s also an integrated front light and the option for front and rear racks. A bar-mounted lever with an e-ink strip serves to adjust the assistance level and tell you how much battery remains.

Faraday are taking orders in the US for the Porteur, which is priced at $3,500. They don’t have a UK distributor at the moment.

Along similar lines, the Coboc electric bike is an exercise in understatement and integration. Again the battery is in the down tube but the minimal controls are recessed into the top tube.

There’s one button to turn the bike on and switch modes (it has a 250W mode and a 500W high-power mode) and you charge it with a magnetic lead that clips in underneath the top tube where the buttons are. The motor’s in the rear wheel and you get just the one gear, although with 500W on hand you’ll probably be just fine.

Raleigh may have re-issued the Chopper but if you’re looking for something to take your grown-up legs about in similar style, these cruisers from Pegas might be just the thing…

Remember Maria Leijerstram? She biked to the South Pole, using an ICE trikes custom-built fat trike recumbent. ICE had her trike at the demo day so we had a quick buzz about on it, and it was a lot of fun: it’s about as close as you can be to invincible on any kind of pedal vehicle. It’s geared for slow progress (bottom gear is 8 inches) and the massive tyres grip like nothing else so you can winch yourself up pretty much anything. We can’t see it catching on as a trend, although if you bunged an electric motor in there it’d pretty much be ticking all the niche boxes.

Magma were showing this carbon re-imagining of the magnesium Kirk Precision that was on Tomorrow's World back in the '80s. Exactly why you’d want to re-imagine the Kirk Precision wasn’t clear, but that’s never stopped bike manufacturers in the past and it sure wasn’t stopping Magma.

Biomega had a clean and classy urban bike on the Gates stand. As well as the carbon belt drive it had some other interesting features, such as the mudguard formed as part of the down tube. And a very pretty stem.

Lastly, it’s not a bike but we want a go in Canyon’s enduro team van.

Click here to read all of our stories from Eurobike 2014 - the world's biggest bike show.