The article is very, very funny and will provide plenty of ammunition for one side of this discussion. Perhaps rightly.
I think it's fabulous that someone took the trouble to do what they did here.
However, it reminds me up to a point of some larks I used to get up to racing Citroen 2CVs.
The jape was similar: Taking a machine designed for anything other than the use to which it was to be put - and then caning it to the flag or to destruction.
You could argue (and I would) that the 2CV was in truth an extremely well-engineered car and therefore not a CSO [car-shaped object].
However, it was not designed for the particular stresses of track racing and even with the best mechanics there was a lot of grief trying to get one round a track for the whole of a 24-hour race.
The steering arms would bend under the stress of racing speeds. I never saw that happen in many years to a car driven as intended. But at racing speeds they turned to butter. That's on a car that was in production with little modification and a fine reliability record for many decades. Many teams welded angle iron to the arms to hold then in position. Not a fix that's popular at McLaren....
There were many other areas where the cars were modified to allow them to complete 24 racing hours.
I do not argue for a moment that the bicycles in the posted article are quality products, but the argument isn't strengthened by putting them through the 2-wheeled equivalent of a Special Forces Selection Process and demonstrating that they're not up to it.
Great article though.... Well done finding it.
