My sincere thanks go to Paul Lowing of the BHPC forum for allowing this article to be published.
An Interview With Peter Ross
An Interview With Peter Ross
For this inaugural issue I decided I would like to interview Peter Ross, the designer of the Trice, Speed Ross, Festina and Gem.
Why Peter? A number of reasons; firstly I ride a Ross, secondly I had spoken to him in passing a few times and he seemed to be an approachable person, thirdly because he was obviously one of the influential UK designers, and finally because he is now divesting himself of production of the above designs and it therefore seemed a good time to review his achievements over the years by focussing on the bikes and trikes he has designed and manufactured over the years.
Peter's philosophy has always been to produce a vehicle that is affordable by a wide a cross-section of the general public and not just a rich man's toy and I personally can find no fault with this viewpoint. Peter's interest in HPVs stems from the late 70's oil crisis caused by the OPEC countries putting up the price of oil.
While queuing for petrol he realised that nearly all the cars in the petrol queues would probably be driven to work at no more than forty mph and were carrying only the driver. A streamlined bicycle or tricycle with a 50cc motor should be capable of 50mph and 200mpg, so he set out to design something on these lines.
Hearing about the Vector that had done a run from Brighton to Arundel at an average speed of 44mph and had previously been clocked at 59mph it was obvious that the HPV movement were producing vehicles with some good aerodynamics, and he began to research into this field. Richard Ballantine was the editor of Bicycle and had got hold of an Avatar, so Peter go in touch with him. Richard and Derek Henden (Hendon?) made a streamlined shell for the Avatar and subsequently won many races with the machine which they called Bluebell.
Richard Ballantine organised an HPV day for the April 1983 Isle of Wight Festival of Cycling which Peter attended with a tricycle he called the Breadboard (after the electronic prototyping and test board). This was an equilateral triangle with wheel base of 3' 6" (same as the track of a 1928 Austin Seven )and was set up so the seat position, leg length, and castor angles were all variable. Peter was pleasantly suprised by how well it went and the event was good for picking up ideas; for example it was the first time he had seen a chain pulley.
The British Human Power Club was formed the end of the following month with Mike Burrows as the honoury chairman. Peter was impressed by the Speedy (the Windcheetah trike, now made by AVD) which at the time cost about £650. The Speedy went out of production the following year for a number of years.
Peter made a one-off prototype of the Trice with a space-frame version and competed with it in Canada using a streamlined body. This proved too difficult to produce and a new version with a square tube backbone and a conventional rear end was developed. This early Trice had a 20" rear and 16" front wheels with a fibreglass seat with headrest and the leg length was changed by moving the bottom bracket which clamped to the tube and was heavier than the Speedy.
In 1986 Peter did some market research to find out what people wanted from the Trice. The analysis was that what was required was a Speedy, only cheaper! The design of the of the Trice was then changed, both wheels diameters being increased by 4" and the the square tube abandoned for round tube which gave more choice of sizes and resulted in a lighter product. This was a success and as sales picked up and Peter began exporting them Holland, Switzerland and Germany. The Trice was then continually developed and modified year on year. Many customers for the Trice were physically incapable of riding a bicycle and the Trice offered a way to continue cycling after a disability
In 1989 the Speed Ross was designed with the view of having as many common parts with the Trice, i.e seat, front and rear wheels and tubes. (The Trice was using a 700C rear wheel by now). It looked rather ungainly with the headrest and so this was eliminated from the design. The fibreglass seat on both the Trice and the Speed Ross was replaced by a mesh seat after a trip to South Africa revealed some shortcomings in its heat dissipation at higher ambient temperatures! Designed to be as light and streamlined as possible The Speed Ross is probably still one of the most aerodynamic non-lowracer unfaired recumbents ever produced. The Speed Ross was raced extensively by Rob Simpson who often battled for the lead against Steve Slade on the Kingsbury's Kingcycle but was unable to beat him.
In 1991 Peter built the first Ross lowracer which was influenced to a degree by Cutting Edge an early US lowracer. This Ross lowracer was raced unfaired by Richard Griggsby and faired by Rob Simpson. At the 1992 European Championships at Munich, Germany John Kingsbury was talking about breaking the UCI hour record using an unfaired bike which inspired Peter to build the Festina which was designed to give the minimum frontal area. Ed Gin also has a Festina site at www.mcs.net/~gkpsol/festina.html (As of 2010, this link does not work)
The Festina was raced by Richard Griggsby and did very well faired, and with Ian Chattington won the unfaired championship several times. The Gem was designed to be a thoroughly practical vehicle which could be fully enclosed. The Gem has 2 totally independant drives which overcome the normal problems of cadence and gear selection associated with tandems, and can be ridden by 1 or two persons. Handcranks can be fitted as can electric assist. The side by side delta layout was chosen as a tandem seating arrangement tends to result to produce a very long wheelbase and it possible to build a delta trike narrower than a tadpole trike as extra width has to be allowed for the wheels to clear whilst turning. If the weight is far enough back the problems associated with delta trikes are minimised. (Having had a couple of short rides on Gems I was suprised at how stable and responsive the steering actually is).
Peter has also been involved with electric power assisted HPVs having raced a Trice with a streamlined body and a 500W motor. He also constructed an all electric carbon fibre racer which he is considering dusting off and using for commuting. Peter has been an extremely influential designer over the last twenty years or so, the Greenspeed he believes was "heavily influenced" by the Trice, but had more lock and centre-point steering. Peter allowed himself to be "heavily influenced" in return and incorporated the centrepoint steering into the Trice. About 2 years ago at the age of 69 Peter decided that he would like to hand over production of the vehicles. Inspired Cycle Engineering (ICE) was set up to do this, but ended up only taking the Trice on board leaving Peter to soldier on with the Ross, Festina and Gem. ICE have developed and diversified and generally taken up-market the Trice into a number of different models and the standard of build and general quality is impressive.
Orbit were also commissioned to make the Ross to be sold by Peter, if all went well he was then going to hand over to Orbit. It all went awry however and Orbit ended up building the Crystal (which is subtly different from the Ross) and it finished rather acrimoniously. I believe Orbit have now stopped producing the Crystal but there may still be a few left in the pipeline.
Currently Peter is still selling the Gem, Ross and Festina but is negotiating to move these to other people. Hopefully when there is some news on these handovers Peter or the new producers will get in touch with an update. I asked Peter if he had had any memorable failures, the most entertaining in my view was the long wheelbase trike he made using a cheap trike rear end he bought from Pashley. The drive was to one of the two rear wheels and when going uphill the front end would bounce about 3" to the left on each pedal stroke!
Of the future of recumbents Peter feels that a large manufacturer will inevitably move in. He believes the first big manufacturer to turn out kid's recumbents for about £175 will be onto a winner. The upside of this would be cheaper bikes but the downside would be a potential loss of some of the individuality of HPV racing and recumbents in general, and the loss of smaller manufacturers.
I'm not sure I agree with Peter on the inevitability of the big manufacturers taking over. Trek's rather inauspicious entry to the market may be off-putting to other manufacturers, also understanding something of how large companies work I believe the recumbent scene would probably be seen as too small and/or too risky a market in which to invest time and money.
Time will tell.
Thanks to Peter for his time and patience
