A motorcycle designer called Mikhail Smolyanov has come up with an interesting concept bike, featuring a bulletproof glass frame, Ural engine and retro plunger suspension.
We see bikes like this from time to time, otherworldly designs that, while they look outrageous, have little or no practical application. That seems to be the case with this design, created in collaboration between the above-mentioned designer and the LBM workshop.
And outrageous this design certainly is, with extensive use of bulletproof glass used in the wheels, frame, and fuel tank of the machine. And it’s not just the chassis that is like nothing else on the road, the transmission of the bike is a ‘hydraulic torque transmission system’… And no, we have no clue how that works either!
While the bike looks like something dropped from the distant future, the engine is surprisingly retro. Most of the time when pictures like this land, the power unit of the bike will be some weird and wonderful electric drive unit, or hydrogen fuel cell that generates electricity via recycled badger droppings. Not here though, as the engine used for this design concept comes from the old-school bike maker Ural. Speaking to Designboom, Smolyanov goes on to confirm that the engine is designed to use transparent valve covers, giving the world a peek inside the engine as it's running.
While the look and idea of a glass-framed bike are interesting, back on planet earth its practical application would (sadly) be limited. With a glass frame built in this compound manner, the bike would weigh about as much as a small church, and that’s before we even get onto the subject of how it’ll slide down the road if you did have a spill…
