Which I’ll have to get good at to post around here it seems, otherwise I’ll look like a spammy mcspammerson replying to myself all the time.

*beautiful*

Check out the Pearson Bikes website

Lolwut

Leaving aside aerodynamics for a moment, such a beam design craps all over the diamond frame from a simple engineering perspective. The refinements and tradeoffs between stiffness and comfort managed with the diamond frame up to this point are all rendered a sad joke when you remove the seat tube and seatstays. Now, you’re free to make the chainstays deep as possible for maximum beef around the BB. And given that it’s a natural for a beam bike to have a separate beam, that introduces a whole world of sizing flexibility, and makes it feasible to offer optimised off-the shelf frames for folks who may be short but heavy and powerful, or tall but light. You could have four or five frame sizes in two different weights (perhaps with a longer head tube option), and maybe as many options for the beam, et voila. But the best part of all? No more futzing around with chainbreakers or special links – just remove a jockey wheel and your intact chain is free. That alone is reason enough to run with any excuse to get rid of seatstays.

Then there’s the fact that it’s simpler than a diamond frame. And if it’s simpler and it does the job better, it’s more elegant. And if it’s more elegant, it’s more [u]beautiful[/u]. Simple as that; if it looks ugly to you, it just means you’re not looking at it right.

As for aerodynamics, there are a few thoughts that seem obvious to me… first, air in the region of the seat tube is already turbulent, so my feeling is that changing the silhouette of the bike around here (as viewed from the side) perhaps isn’t going to do a very great deal… it strikes me as diminishing returns stuff. However, seatstays hang out in the breeze, and the brake… and by basically removing everything behind the head tube except the back wheel, it does seem possible there’s quite a bit less turbulence involved for the air passing between the rider’s legs. I imagine the aerodynamics of the rear wheel would matter a little more on a beam bike. At a guess, I’d say the aerodynamics of the Z1-Eleven here would have to be at least as good or better than the best diamond frames, but probably not quite as good as a Z frame like the Lotus Sport 110, which was designed with aero as priority #1.

That’s my 2c…. you might not think such armchair musings are worth even that, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t gone out on a limb anywhere.