The Wild Buffalo and more on Coasting

This concept bike is not new, so some of you may have seen it before. A reader, Brian, sent this image to me and I knew I had seen it somewhere before. This bike, designed by Jason Su and called the Wild Buffalo, won 3rd place in the 2004 Taiwan International Bicycle Design competition (for the record, I like this bike better than the 1st and 2nd placed entries that year). I tried to go to the competition’s website to find out more about this bike, but the site was down. Maybe it is just temporary; I don’t know. Does anyone know the fate of the Taiwan bike design competition? Granted it produced some really weird concepts in the past, but it will be a shame if it doesn’t take place in what is to be its 12th year. Fill me in if you know something.

In keeping with my Shimano Coasting theme from the past week, check out this great post on Bike Portland. Shannon Bryant and David Lawrence from Shimano’s marketing group were on hand at the National bike summit in DC to tell the story behind the Coasting concept. Luckily for us, Jonathon Maus was there to cover it. I hate to give away the ending to his post, but I do like this quote:

“I also appreciate how Shimano has started a conversation that challenges advocates to go further and reach beyond their base to convince those 161 million non-cycling Americans to get back in the saddle…and that it will take more than just bike lanes to do it.”

I couldn’t agree more and I urge you to read Jonathon’s entire post here.

Posted

March 20, 2007

James

Tags:

Coasting, Shimano, Student Design, Taiwan

Comments

4 responses to “The Wild Buffalo and more on Coasting”

Jonathan Maus

March 20, 2007

Thanks for that link James. I just posted a mini-review and photos of Trek’s Lime Light Coasting bike.

I’ve been following Coasting closely. You can read all my coverage here.

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michael

March 20, 2007

I would be surprised if the website didn’t reappear as the competition is a staple of the Taipei Show. In fact it would rather dull without it. Despite the fact that very few workable concepts emerge it serves an important social function within the Taiwanese bicycle industry in affirming their global position as a manufacturing nation of quality bicycles. The Taiwanese are extremely proud of the progress they have made in becoming the go to country in Asia for quality products. Hell, even the Italians, famously snooty as they are, have their composite bicycles made there now.

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Fritz

March 21, 2007

James, I really really really hope the bike industry takes the invaluable market research that Shimano did and creates real products with it. Trek, especially, seems to be taking the lead in their promotion of Lime. I hope their distributors take it as seriously as Trek seems to.

Reply
James

March 21, 2007

Thanks for those links Jonathon. Great coverage.

Michael, I’ll be surprised as well, but in the ten or so years that I have known about it, I have never seen that runeride website down before. It will be shame if the competition doesn’t happen.

Fritz, I am happy to see the media attention that the Lime is getting. Trek is doing a great job promoting it and I hope other companies follow suit. Certainly they will if the Lime product line is successful for Trek.

Reply