This story starts – as any good story does – with a Lamborghini hanging off a bike frame suspended from a crane.

Or maybe it starts a little before that, with the record-breaking Kickstarter campaign that created that bike. Or maybe, a year later, with the bikeshare scheme bankrolled by the money from the Kickstarter.

But there’s definitely a place this story ends: 800,000 bikes abandoned in fields and construction sites around China.

The tale of the Chinese start-up SpeedX is one of rapid growth, dizzying expansion and total collapse. In the space of two wild years, the company blossomed from the seed of an idea to hogging headlines around the cycling and tech world. It was poised to disrupt the big brands with its competitively priced and highly integrated ‘smart’ road bikes. And then, seemingly overnight, on the eve of shipping its ambitious second model, SpeedX disappeared without a trace – leaving in its wake a trail of unfulfilled Kickstarter pledges, unpaid suppliers, and unreturned deposits.

This article started with an idle question – “hey, whatever happened to SpeedX?” – and turned into a months-long investigation. By the time it was done, I’d uncovered the strange and sad tale of a smart young business that was born of its high-stakes environment, and ultimately smothered by it.

But it got a fair bit weirder than that, too. The ripples from the company’s collapse spread to include the ghosts of Tiananmen Square, the Chinese secret police, and the collapse of an entire industry.

So: what caused the failure of this heavily hyped, multi-million-dollar company? Was it a case of financial mismanagement, overeager growth, or something more sinister?

What happened to SpeedX?