They’re calling it “a titanium hypercar on two wheels”. The new innovative road bicycle from Aston Martin, developed in collaboration with British titanium bicycle leader J.Laverack, delivers the ultimate in both performance and aesthetics.
Called the J.Laverack Aston Martin .1R, it made its public debut in London in early November 2023.
The two brands, who worked with high-performance automotive designers from Aston Martin, claim it is “the most bespoke, most advanced and most meticulously engineered bicycle ever created”.
By using a combination of titanium and carbon fibre, the hand-built frame of the bike offers both stiffness and lively ride qualities. “It has a responsiveness that will delight everywhere from the rough cobbles of Flanders to the soaring climbs of the Pyrenees,” say the manufacturers who designed the frame in the same studios that Aston Martin uses for its cars.
Another standout quality is the way the bike’s 3D-printed titanium lugs are fused flawlessly with its sculpted tubes. While most road bikes have fixings at the stem or the seat post, for example, the J.Laverack Aston Martin .1R has no exposed cables or hoses visible anywhere on the bike.
Oliver Laverack is co-founder of J.Laverack Bicycles. “Every component is designed to be part of the whole and to marry perfectly with the adjoining elements, achieving an unsurpassed degree of integration,” he explains. “Working with the team at Aston Martin has unlocked new ideas and innovations, the application of which has created a bicycle more advanced than anything currently available on the market.”
Marek Reichman is chief creative officer at Aston Martin. “The simple, clever genius is how we’ve fused the engineering advancements throughout the bike with a purity of performance design to deliver a viscerally exhilarating riding experience,” he says. “The result is a distinctive form, born through tradition and technology and handcrafted using only the most advanced materials, befitting the pedigrees and forward-thinking natures of our two iconic British companies.”
Customers who purchase the new bike will be invited to Aston Martin’s headquarters in Gaydon, in Warwickshire, for a full personal fitting. The stem, the cranks and the saddle height, for example, can be custom-machined down to the nearest millimetre.
Customers can also select the exact same colour palettes and trim choices available on Aston Martin’s cars, allowing them to match car and bike if they wish.
Using Aston Martin’s online configurator, they will be able to specify the colours of their bike’s various components, ranging from the saddle, forks and handlebar tape, to the tubes, lugs, stem, seat post and handlebar drops.
Otherwise the carbon fibre can be left bare, showing off the beauty of the material. Accents such as the bottom bracket cups, brake callipers, and the brake disc centres have a special ceramic coating that can be picked out in bronze or muted in black.
Bikes will be supplied with their own aluminium or carbon fibre cases, which can be used both for display in the home or for travelling. Individual bikes and components will be specially numbered.
Customers will be able to choose from any of the three groupsets used by professionals on the UCI World Tour. In addition, there are wheels with carbon tubeless rims, as well as Continental tyres, and a Brooks saddle and handlebar grips which can be trimmed in the owner’s choice of leather or a material called Alcantara.
It turns out there’s a neat symmetry to J.Laverack’s collaboration with Aston Martin. The founders of the historic British car brand – Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford – were originally brought together through a love of racing bicycles at London’s historic Bath Road Club. If they were still around today, there’s no doubt the meticulously engineered J.Laverack Aston Martin .1R would have both amazed and thrilled them.
