In 1992, Mike Burrows, who died of cancer at the age of 79, watched Chris Boardman win the 4,000m individual pursuit final on the bike at the Barcelona Olympics. Boardman drove the Lotus 108 model that Mike developed with Lotus Engineering and the combination won Britain its first Olympic gold medal in the sport in 72 years.
Mike’s background as an engineer was running his own company in Norwich making packaging machinery in the 1970’s. When his car broke down, he took up cycling and developed his own recumbents and tricycles, where the rider leaned back for optimal aerodynamics and had the pedals in the front instead of down.
He felt that the established form of the bicycle was being accepted too widely, to the detriment of innovation. The increasing interest in a wide range of human-powered vehicles in the 1980s fired his imagination so far that he could joke, “I’m not the best bike designer in the world, I’m the only bike designer in the world.” ”
His breakthrough came when he looked beyond the metal tubing—usually steel tubing—that bicycles were traditionally made of. A friend’s father in the aerospace industry provided him with some carbon fiber leftovers.
Impregnated with resin this could be cast into a strong aerodynamic shape ideal for track racing. The term monocoque is used for a structure whose loads and forces are held together in a single skin, and Mike said the imaginative leap required for his novel vehicle came from seeing a Barbara Hepworth sculpture.
When the British Cycling Federation presented Mike’s monocoque bike to the sport’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), based in Switzerland, in 1985, it was rejected. But Mike’s friend Rudy Thomas, who worked for Lotus, interested the automaker and in 1990 approval was obtained from the UCI.
Mike Burrows in 1992 with a prototype of the bike Chris Boardman rode to Olympic glory. Photo: PA Images/Alamy
Unlike most people in the bike industry at the time, Mike was constantly mindful of aerodynamics. Wind tunnel testing of the Lotus bike showed time advantages over a regular bike, similar to those used by Boardman to win German pursuit world champion Jens Lehmann.
The 1992 triumph was not celebrated by the UCI. Mike appreciated the concerns that expensive bikes built for rich-world athletes gave an unfair advantage, but was convinced that when an event like the Tour de France, its faster machines, built on monocoques and aerodynamics, would even could be used for their prologue or a time trial, it would present the bike as a state-of-the-art vehicle of the future, not the past. Boardman drove the Lotus to a time trial victory at the 1994 Lille Tour and set a record average speed that stood for more than two decades, convincing both Mike and the UCI that they were both right.
That year, Mike was recruited by bike manufacturer Giant in Taiwan, from where he oversaw a quieter design revolution, developing the Giant TCR (Total Compact Road) model that has influenced every road bike since, perfecting the geometries to make the same frame could be adjusted to accommodate riders of different heights. The development allowed for more standardization and thus commercialization of road bikes without compromising on frame stiffness and performance. He also worked on mountain bikes and the Giant Halfway folding bike.
In 1996, the UCI created the Lugano Charter, effectively a formal response to the success and controversy that Mike’s radical designs generated. It decreed that cycling should be a sport of athletes, not engineers, thus setting strict technical limitations that were the opposite of Mike’s quest for greater efficiency and speed. As he put it, “I left Giant in 2000 because the UCI prevented me from building better bikes. In the pro scene, they are all production-only now.”
Returning from Taiwan, Mike focused on recumbents and tricycles and looked for more aerodynamic advantages. He was a staunch supporter of the British Human Power Club, organizing circuit days for club championships and enjoying getting faster every year thanks to advances in technology that outdid his own age.
Although he loved to go fast, the pursuit of efficiency motivated him more than speed, and convenience was central to his fondness for the technical possibilities offered by the bicycle. I met him through efforts to commercialize 8Freight, his cargo bike, named after an old British Rail locomotive and designed with a relaxed riding position and steering to ensure everyone – couriers, parents on school trips, gardeners with tools and earth – it could take it easy. He believed that bicycles offer the possibility of a better, more efficient society.
Mike was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire where his father was a carpenter who later opened a toy shop which allowed Mike to play with model airplanes. After leaving school at 15, Mike worked as a mechanical engineer, married his wife Tuula and moved to Norwich in 1969 to work on boats operating on the Norfolk Broads. His first technical success was a machine that packed individual bags of chips into multipacks, and he went into business for himself. A technical perspective that came from outside of bike design was often credited for his future willingness to slaughter their sacred cows, a mission that became a defining feature of his life’s work.
All of this was accomplished in a workshop, which was a place with easels and heavy machine tools used whenever Mike needed to make or modify a part. He always wore overalls and clogs, classical music was playing, and an archive of newspaper clippings, memorabilia, and the bikes themselves gave the impression of a living museum. Observing birds in the Norfolk countryside he was still open to technical inspiration.
His book Bicycle Design: Towards the Perfect Machine (2000) saw a series of editions, the title of which encapsulates his commitment to the vehicle he loved.
He is survived by Tuula and her son Paul.
Mike Burrows, bicycle designer, born April 17, 1943; died August 15, 2022
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