What happens when one of the most luxurious automotive brands in the world teams up with one of the most luxurious bicycle brands in the world? That would be the J.Laverick Aston Martin .1R — the direct offspring of a fruitful partnership between the two high-flying British luxury brands, who are jointly calling it the “world’s most bespoke, advanced and meticulously engineered road bicycle”. This design is definitely bespoke, considering that no two Aston Martin .1R bikes will be created the same —and it isn’t exactly clear how many will be constructed in total — seeing as how every purchaser who orders from Aston Martin’s “multi-award-winning” online configurator will receive a personal invitation to get their own unique Aston Martin .1R fitted at Aston Martin’s HQ in Gaydon, UK.
Designer: J.Laverack x Aston Martin
This advanced titanium road bike design uses a mixture of 3D-printed titanium lugs and sculpted carbon fiber tubes for a lightweight yet sturdy build without any exposed bolts on the outer body. Aston Martin’s designers call this a world first, and I can’t deny it looks like a cross between a bike and a sports car. Though, calling it a “sports bike” would be redundant. That said, Aston Martin’s Executive VP and Chief Creative Officer, Marek Reichman, dug into this idea even further in an official press release, calling the Aston Martin .1R a “titanium hypercar on two wheels.”
As I mentioned earlier, Aston Martin’s Gaydon HQ is where a new owner can individually select and install their bells and whistles (literally) after mixing and matching Aston Martin’s signature color schemes — which mirror those of the prestige British auto designer’s most popular luxury vehicles — on the tubes, lugs, forks, stem, seat post, and handlebar drops via the aforementioned configurator. For what it’s worth, yes, you can also choose between saddle and handlebar type. Right now, it’s not clear how much this will all cost, but it makes sense to expect a higher price than most other J.Laverack bicycles, which start at around $5,000.
Its max speed probably doesn’t equal that of a shiny new Aston Martin supercar, but the Aston Martin .1R is likely the speediest (and sturdiest) bicycle we’ve ever seen. Several elements of the ($3 million) Aston Martin Valkyrie’s engineering and design process made their way over to the .1R, including the bicycle’s 40-micron badges. The wheels themselves, plus the stem, also use similar processes. According to Aston Martin, “The hypercar’s wheel design can be glimpsed in miniature in the titanium piston caps of the brakes on the bike, while if you inspect the beautifully machined cups on the threaded bottom bracket of the .1R and you will notice parallels with the central wheel nuts on an Aston Martin Valkyrie.”
