An earlier version of Specialized Creative Director Robert Egger’s “Eff You See Eye” concept bike was mentioned on Bicycle Design a couple months ago (in a post that was also featured on Core77). At that time, the personal project bike was just a teaser, a partially assembled primer grey prototype, but now Specialized has released photos of the completed concept bike, along with more information about the design, on their Very Special Things site.

In the updated post, Egger talks about his reasons behind the fUCI project:

“It’s kind of everything anti-UCI. Basically a ‘hey, here’s a totally different way of doing things. It doesn’t fit into your box, but the people who would appreciate this bike aren’t concerned with that box.’ The whole thing was really just an exercise in working outside of the UCI box.”

He goes on to say:

“The UCI really caters to a very small population, but there’s so many other people out there who couldn’t care less about the UCI. They don’t follow the racing and they don’t even know all the limitations that are put on bikes for the UCI riders. So, my feeling was let’s design a bike for someone who really just wants to go fast on a road bike.”

I won’t elaborate on the design. If you are interesting in learning more and seeing additional images, you can click through to the updated post at Very Special Things. The design itself is secondary to me. What I really love about this is the fact that someone from major bike company is talking about ignoring the UCI technical regulations when it comes to product development. Regardless of your feelings about the UCI (and I have shared my opinions here more than a few times), rules that govern pro racing should not completely dictate the types of bikes that are available to the public. I completely agree with Egger that there is a huge market of people who would like to ride fast, but could care less about the UCI. Actually, I would consider myself to be part of that market, so I would love to see more speed oriented bike designs that are faster and better then the bikes in the pro peloton. As Egger says in the article, the job of a designer is “to create products people feel they can’t live without.” Great…and for the record I can definitely live without another 6.8kg double triangle carbon frame. There are a few innovative non-diamond frame designs out there already (mostly geared toward triathletes), but I hope to see many more non-UCI compliant road bike designs on the market soon. Even if the fUCI will never be a production model, kudos to Egger and Specialized for stirring the pot.

Photo credits: Carson Blume





Subscribe to the email newsletter, and follow Bicycle Design on Facebook , Twitter , Pinterest , and Google + … and now on Instagram too!